Backend Engineer
Senior Software Engineer, AI Transformation
Bucharest
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About Payscale
Payscale is the pioneer of compensation intelligence, helping organizations make smarter pay decisions that drive business performance. For more than 20 years, Payscale has combined trusted market data with AI-powered technology to deliver actionable insights that turn pay from a cost into a catalyst for growth. The Payscale Intelligence Cloud portfolio of solutions — Ascent, JobNav, and Paycycle — empower top companies and businesses like Cintas, Leidos, Chipotle, Ohio State University, and TJX Companies.
Create confidence in your compensation. Payscale.
To learn more, visit www.payscale.com.
Job Summary
We are looking for a motivated and experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our AI Transformation team. This team will build AI-powered solutions for internal teams across Go-to-Market, Support, and the broader corporate side of Payscale—automating workflows, surfacing insights, and ultimately building toward a self-serve platform that enables stakeholders to solve their own problems at scale. This team will play an integral part helping to lead AI transformation from the ground up. You'll work across the entire stack—front-end interfaces, back-end services, and agentic AI systems—using modern technologies and an agent-first development approach. You will partner directly with internal stakeholders to understand their needs, prototype rapidly, and deliver secure, scalable solutions that compound in value across the organization, all the while building towards a scalable platform to empower and drive innovation at the edges of the broader organization through self service capabilities and solution management.
What You'll Do
As a
Senior Software Engineer
, your day-to-day responsibilities may include:
- Own and build AI-powered applications end-to-end—from spec-driven design and implementation through deployment and production operation—with an eye toward generalizing solutions into reusable platform components.
- Take responsibility for cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and production readiness, with support from the DevOps team when needed.
- Develop and maintain user interfaces using React.
- Build and consume REST APIs using Node.js with TypeScript.
- Architect data models and access patterns, and efficiently consuming data from existing data-processing services and relational databases (AWS Aurora).
- Iterating quickly on early-stage features, balancing speed of exploration with engineering quality.
- Actively leverage agentic development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) across the full SDLC—from spec-driven design and code generation to testing, documentation, and deployment—continuously optimizing workflows for speed, quality, and token efficiency.
- Design, build, and orchestrate agentic AI workflows and multi-agent systems that automate complex processes, progressively generalizing solutions into reusable components that enable stakeholders to self-serve.
- Proactively identify and address technical debt, architectural risks, and scalability bottlenecks.
- Drive quality end-to-end—leveraging (and building where necessary) agentic QA systems that continuously validate features and catch regressions, complemented by unit tests, integration tests, and strong engineering standards.
- Debugging issues systematically across the full stack, including live production environments.
- Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and engineers while also partnering directly with stakeholders—acting as a consultant who distills requirements, validates solutions through rapid prototyping, and iterates based on real user feedback.
What We're Looking For
- Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
- 5+ years of experience building backend systems with Node.js and TypeScript.
- 5+ years of experience with modern front-end frameworks, specifically React.
- Strong experience with microservices and service-oriented architectures.
- Strong understanding of data model architecture and access patterns for data-intensive applications.
- Solid experience working with complex relational databases — comfortable navigating non-trivial schemas, writing efficient queries, and reasoning about data relationships.
- Comfortable working in a mixed environment — maintaining and evolving established products while also building new services and capabilities on top of them.
- Good understanding of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and production operations — enough to work effectively alongside a DevOps team without needing hand-holding.
- Experience with Docker and container orchestration (ECS, EKS, or Kubernetes).
- A proven track record of writing clean, testable, and maintainable code.
- Fluent (or actively progressing) in agentic development—you understand how to prompt and plan with AI agents using techniques like spec-driven design, know how to steer and course-correct agent behavior, and have experience creating and managing multi-agent workflows.
- Hands-on experience with agentic development tools such as Cursor or Claude Code, with a working understanding of how to optimize token usage and maximize output quality.
- Comfortable owning the full SDLC end-to-end—from requirements gathering through deployment and production operations—including building agentic QA systems to maintain quality at speed.
- Strong consultant mindset with experience working directly with business stakeholders and internal customers—able to listen deeply, distill ambiguous requirements into actionable specs, validate ideas through rapid iteration, and adjust course based on feedback.
Nice to Have
- Experience building AI-powered internal tools, self-serve platforms, or automation that enables non-technical stakeholders to solve their own problems.
- Experience with prompt engineering, RAG architectures, or LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI).
- Familiarity with platform engineering patterns—designing APIs, abstractions, and interfaces that allow non-engineers to configure and extend functionality.
- Awareness of UI/UX best practices and accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG).
Location
Payscale Romania has an employee centric hybrid model that provides you the flexibility to do your best work in a space that supports you, while also finding time to collaborate in person in our office for the moments that matter.
In our hybrid model, employees can work from the location that works best for them when not in the office.
When you work from home, we recommend ensuring that you can meet the following technology, equipment and workspace requirements:
- High-Speed Internet - A stable broadband or fiber connection (satellite is highly discouraged) with a minimum speed of 100 Mbps in a dedicated workspace that has a reliable Wi-Fi signal.
- Device for Multifactor Authentication (MFA/2FA) - smartphone, tablet, etc.
When it matters (usually no more than a few times a year) we take the time to gather in larger groups for in-person events.
Payscale has employees across the US, Canada, UK, The Philippines and Romania however we are currently unable to hire in the Quebec Province, Northern Ireland, and Hawaii.
Benefits And Perks
All around awesome culture where together we strive to live our 5 values:
- Data informed decision making.
- Customer first. Always.
- Succeed together.
- Relentless about results. Obsessed with excellence.
- Lead the change. Shape the standard.
An open and inclusive environment where you’ll learn and grow through programs and resources like:
- Monthly company All Hands meetings
- Regular opportunities for executive leadership exposure through things like AMAs
- Access to continued learning & development opportunities
- Our commitment to a continuous feedback culture which allows us to drive performance and career growth
- A growing network of Employee Resource Groups
- Company sponsored volunteer hours
- And more!
Our More Standard Benefits
- Paid Time Off: 25 paid vacation days, plus eligible public holidays, 2 floating holidays annually and 2 additional Payscale holidays (Global Mental Health Day & US Independence Day)
- Medical Insurance: 100% employer-paid coverage for employees, plus premium coverage for 1 dependent (employee responsible for dependent taxes).
- Meal Vouchers: Monthly allowance, fully funded by Payscale.
- Pension: Employer contribution to a Pillar III plan.
- Life & Disability Insurance: 100% employer-paid coverage.
- Remote Work Stipend: Monthly stipend to support remote work and/or wellness expenses.
- Additional Leave: Paid leave entitlements under the Romanian Labor Code (e.g., marriage, bereavement).
Equal Opportunity Employer:
We embrace equal employment opportunity. Payscale is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. It is our policy that employees will not be subjected to unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, or ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, marital status, sexual orientation, political ideology, and any other basis protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including but not limited to: recruitment, hiring, transfers, promotions, training, discipline, termination, compensation and benefits, performance appraisals, education, and social and recreational programs.
We know the
confidence gap
and
imposter syndrome
can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates, so please don’t hesitate to apply — we’d love to hear from you.
If you have a disability or impairment and need assistance with the application process, please email
recruiting@payscale.com
for support.
Fraud Alert:
Payscale values security and privacy. During your job application and interview process, we will never ask for your personal banking or financial information, social security number, or other sensitive information, if you are unsure if a message is from Payscale, please email
recruiting@payscale.com
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