Director, Back-end Engineering

Company Intro 

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did I ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a 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 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 Intro 

The Core Online Domain team builds and manages Coupang’s customer-facing eCommerce platforms, including our backend systems, mobile apps, and web platforms. We are looking for an experienced engineering leader to head the mobile, web, and backend teams that own Coupang’s primary eCommerce experiences, such as the Home, Search, and Product List pages. 
 

This is a critical role within the Core Online Domain team. You will manage director-level leaders and senior staff engineers to ensure the absolute reliability and stability of our online systems, empowering our product engineers to deliver high-quality features with exceptional productivity in the AI era. In addition, you play an important role in overseeing architecture and implementation decisions as well as strategies to address technical debt in the existing legacy system. 

Responsibilities: 

• Work with key stakeholders to design and build a solid and extensible system architecture to effectively empower business initiatives and engineering productivity.
• Lead and manage multiple engineering teams, ensuring the teams are following industry best practices and are working efficiently to deliver high-quality systems. 
• Build cohesive technical strategic plans to accomplish business objectives, identify specific areas of risk and opportunity, and formulate goals and milestones that will enable us to achieve those objectives.
• Lead the team in exploring Agentic Coding and Agentic Operations to elevate productivity, enhance operational quality, and reduce repetitive tasks. 
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, such as Infra team, Product Management, Quality Assurance, and Operation, to ensure the development team is aligned with the company's overall goals and objectives. 

Basic Qualifications: 

• At least 12 years of experience in software engineering, and 7 years+ in team management, preferably with customer-oriented applications and systems, with a proven track record of success.
• Proven experience in leading and managing engineering teams on large scale and challenging projects.
• Demonstrated leadership capabilities with a focus on driving results, fostering collaboration, and inspiring teams to achieve ambitious goals.
• Strong technical background with the ability to understand and discuss complex technical systems, architecture & design, and proficiency in navigating them. Experienced as an architect or chief architect is highly desirable. 
• Must be able to make informed decisions regarding the selection and implementation of appropriate technologies and roadmap.  
• Passionate about growing careers and mentoring engineers across both the individual contributor and manager tracks
• Working efficiency in English, to communicate with teams through China/Korea/India/US regions