Company Introduction
We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we are collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar commerce industry from the ground up and establishing an unparalleled reputation for being leading and reliable force in South Korean commerce.
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been at since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.
Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.
Team Overview
The Platform Services team within E-commerce Engineering builds, operates, and scales the core backend platform powering essential logic of Coupang’s mobile app and web—includes Login, Auth, Home, Search, Category, Product Detail, Cart, Checkout, and Orders. This role leads the technical direction and architecture of the next-generation of Data Access, Authorization & Authentication platform that delivers reliable and secured customer experience across Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and other global markets.
Role Overview
As a Senior Staff Backend Engineer (IC), you will shape the long-term technical strategy and architecture of the AuthN & AuthZ platform. You will build infrastructure that provides the right level of access control and monitoring and detection and response in the AuthN and AuthZ platform, defining and evangelizing organizational standards and best practices while designing and implementing highly reliable and scalable systems, and mentoring Senior and Staff engineers to raise the technical bar.
Key Responsibilities
- Drive Technology Vision & Roadmap: Define and champion a 12–18 month platform strategy, author and approve RFCs, and align cross-functional teams toward shared objectives.
- Architectural Authority: Provide thought leadership in designing AuthN and AuthZ architectures for multi-region, multi-tenant environments. Establish and enforce API governance standards and controlling access, monitoring with detection and response.
- Lead Complex System Design: Oversee architecture that ensures backward compatibility, orchestrates phased migrations, and maintains data integrity—including eventual consistency—while optimizing caching strategies.
- Operational Excellence & Reliability: Set and uphold SLOs and error budgets. Lead capacity planning, performance optimization, and incident management, including root-cause analysis and postmortem reviews.
- Security, Compliance & Cost Optimization: Ensure privacy and regulatory compliance while driving cost-efficient technical decisions and operational standards.
- Hands-on Contribution: Perform high-impact code reviews and performance optimizations.
- Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with PMs, TPMs, and teams across Search, Data, Checkout, and more to deliver reusable platform components and standards.
- Mentorship & Bar Raising: Coach Senior and Staff level engineers, lead design reviews, and elevate engineering culture and quality standards.
Basic Qualifications
- 10+ years of professional backend development experience (excluding internships)
- 7+ years of experience in Java/Kotlin/Spring-based service development and 3+ years in architecture leadership
- Proven experience designing and operating web-scale microservices; hands-on experience with AWS and Kubernetes
- Deep expertise in diagnosing mission-critical system failures, identifying root causes, and institutionalizing preventive measures
- Strong communication and leadership skills to align stakeholders and drive complex technical decisions across organizations
Preferred Qualifications
- Proven experience designing and operating AuthN and AuthZ infrastructure and services – access control, monitoring, detection, and response.
- Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems handling global multi-region traffic
- Hands-on experience with data pipelines and event processing using Kafka, Spark, Cassandra, and Airflow
- Proven track record in building observability frameworks with tools such as OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana
- Expertise in JVM performance tuning, large-scale cache/storage design, API schema versioning, and testing
- Experience designing platforms, frameworks, or SDKs that are widely adopted across multiple product teams
Recruitment Process and Others
Recruitment Process
- Application Review - Phone (Virtual) Interview - Onsite (Virtual) Interview – Offer
- The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
- Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.
Details to Consider
- This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
- Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
- Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
- Hiring may be restricted in case the legal qualifications required for hiring and work performance is not met.
Privacy Notice
Document Return Policy
- This notification is given pursuant to Article 11 (6) of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act.
- A job applicant, who has applied but not been finally selected for a position at Coupang (the “Company”), may request the Company to return his/her hiring documents submitted pursuant to the Fair Hiring Procedure Act. However, this will not apply where the hiring documents were submitted via the website of the Company or e-mail, or where the job applicant submitted those documents voluntarily without a request from the Company. In addition, if the hiring documents were destroyed due to a natural disaster or any other reasons not attributable to the Company, such documents will be deemed to have been returned to the job applicant.
- A job applicant who wishes to request the return of his/her hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above should fill out a “Request for Return of Hiring Documents” [Annex Form No. 3 in the Enforcement Rule of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act] and submit It by email ([email protected]). In such case, within fourteen (14) days from the date of identifying the receipt of the request, the Company will send the hiring documents to the job applicant’s designated address via registered mail. Please be informed that the job applicant is required to pay the postage on the registered mail.
- In preparation for a job applicant’s request for the return of hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above, the Company shall retain the original hiring documents submitted by the job applicant for 180 days from the completion of the recruiting process. If no request is made until the end of this period, all his/her hiring documents will be destroyed immediately in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act.
- The above paragraphs 1 - 4 shall only apply when the labor-related laws of Korea govern the application. They are otherwise not applicable.
