Backend Engineer (Java, API)

About The Company

Small businesses represent 99.9% of all companies, yet they often face the challenge of choosing between outdated enterprise phone systems and their personal phones. This multi-billion dollar market has been largely overlooked for decades, leaving businesses to cobble together inefficient solutions that hinder growth rather than support it. Quo is transforming this landscape by delivering an AI-powered platform that unifies calls, texts, and customer information into a single, easy-to-use system. More than just a phone system, Quo is setting a new standard for how businesses connect with their customers.

Driven by core values of speed, determination, and customer-centric innovation, Quo is committed to delivering exceptional value to underserved businesses. Trusted by over 120,000 companies and rated #1 in customer satisfaction on G2, Quo is backed by prominent investors including Y Combinator, Tiger Global, Craft Ventures, and Slow Ventures. The company is poised for significant growth and impact in the communications technology space.

About The Role

The Connect team at Quo is responsible for the public API, MCP, OAuth, webhooks, and integrations with key tools such as HubSpot, Jobber, and Clio. As the fastest growing segment of the company, this platform processes nearly a billion API requests daily, accounting for approximately 25% of all Quo traffic. Many customers engage with the API exclusively, bypassing the app entirely. Recent growth includes over 16,000 MCP connections established in just 60 days.

This role is the first true staff-level position on the Connect team, serving as the technical voice and architect. You will set the platform's long-term architecture, collaborate with product, partnerships, and leadership teams, and facilitate seamless API adoption across engineering. Mentorship of senior engineers and maintaining platform performance, reliability, and observability are key responsibilities.

The Connect team operates autonomously, managing its own infrastructure including clusters, databases, Redis, and queues. The team’s technology stack includes Node.js and TypeScript, event-driven microservices with Temporal and RabbitMQ, Kubernetes on AWS, Postgres, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, and Datadog for observability. The API supports web (React), iOS, and Android clients.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience with real-time staff-level leadership
• Proven experience building or owning public APIs, developer platforms, SDKs, or webhooks for commercial products
• Demonstrated ability to drive large cross-team initiatives in organizations of 80+ engineers
• Experience navigating growth-stage companies, preferably post-Series B with 100-300 engineers
• Comfortable owning both infrastructure and application code components
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to build cross-team rapport
• Proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript is ideal, but experience in Go, Python, Java, or similar languages is valued
  
  

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain the public API platform enabling rapid feature integration across teams
• Define and own the long-term architecture of the API platform, including SDK development
• Serve as the technical liaison for partnerships, product, and leadership, managing expectations and protecting the roadmap
• Mentor senior engineers through design reviews, pull request evaluations, and coaching
• Ensure platform scalability, reliability, and observability as traffic and usage grow
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to facilitate API adoption and integration
• Manage infrastructure components including clusters, databases, and messaging queues
  
  

Benefits

• Competitive base salary ranging from $186,000 to $242,000 USD depending on location and experience
• Equity ownership in a rapidly growing, venture-backed company
• Comprehensive medical coverage
• Monthly lifestyle stipend
• Flexible paid time off (PTO) policy
• Remote-first work environment with opportunities to engage in hub city communities
  
  

Equal Opportunity

Quo is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse work environment where all employees can bring their authentic selves to work. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply and join our mission to empower small businesses through innovative communication solutions.