Staff Back End Engineer- TQM

Forma.ai is a Series B startup that's revolutionizing how sales compensation is designed, managed and optimized. We handle billions in annual managed commissions for market leaders like Edmentum, Stryker, and Autodesk. 

Our growth has been fuelled by our passion for fundamentally changing and shaping how companies use sales intelligence to drive business strategy.  

We’re welcoming equally driven individuals who are excited about creating something big! 

We build enterprise software that helps organizations optimize sales performance and improve go-to-market agility. Our engineering organization includes multiple product application teams responsible for delivering core customer-facing capabilities.

We are seeking Staff Software Engineers to join our TQM team. You’ll work alongside other staff, senior, and early-career engineers to design, build, and scale backend and frontend systems that power enterprise-grade product workflows. This is an opportunity to work on complex product and data problems while contributing meaningfully to technical decisions, system quality, and team delivery.

We are low on meetings and high on accountability. Most of the team is in the EST time zone, with a few located in AST, PST, and Central as well.

The TQM team builds the planning layer of Forma.ai’s platform. TQM stands for Territory and Quota Management. Sales operations teams use it to plan the deployment of large scale sales organizations: divide their target market among sellers, set and communicate targets, and manage changes during the year. Commissions, crediting, and reporting all depend on our data.

We build with AI tools every day, so writing code is rarely what slows us down. What matters more is how often a person makes the right call. For the staff role at Forma, that means strong product judgement as well strong technical judgement. You will decide what problem to solve, which customer request shows a real pattern and which is a one-off, how to actually build and deliver software at a high velocity in the new AI world, and how to build a system will hold up for years. The team’s direction will depend heavily on how well you make those calls.

You will:

• →Lead the design of TQM’s enterprise features, including permissions, audit history, and approval workflows.
• →You care about the product experience, working on both frontend and backend towards the goal of delivering strong experiences.
• →Design these features so that new product areas can use them without rebuilding them.
• →Learn from customers how planning is governed inside their organizations and turn that into a clear plan for delivery.
• →Decide what not to build. Cut scope that doesn’t serve a customer, and say so clearly.
• →Set the technical direction for how these features connect to the rest of the Forma.ai platform.
• →Write the design documents and decision records that the team builds from, and review others’ with a high bar.
• →Stay hands-on. Build the hardest parts yourself and make sure the result works in production.
• →Contribute heavily to product ideation discussions, and bring opinions.

• Extensive experience building and running production systems, including leading the design of a product area or platform.
• Proficiency in Kotlin, Java, or a similar language, and comfort working across the stack, including a TypeScript and React frontend.
• Strong SQL, relational schema design, and data modelling skills, including data models that had to change over many years.
• A track record of good technical judgement. You can describe major decisions, what you rejected, and how they held up.
• A track record of good product judgement. You have shaped what was built, and you can explain how you weighed customer value, cost, and risk.
• Experience talking with customers or customer-facing teams and turning what you learn into product decisions.
• Regular and critical use of AI coding tools, and a clear view on how a team should work with them.
• Clear, precise writing. You do not expect others to read AI output. Your audience will put in as much effort reading your docs as you do writing them.

• Experience with rule-driven systems, validation workflows, or approval and governance features.
• Exposure to Sales Performance Management, RevOps, Incentive Compensation, or financial planning.
• Experience with analytical databases or large-scale data processing.
• Familiarity with AWS and Kubernetes.

• This position is for an existing vacancy

• Work well, together. We’re real. We have kids and pets. Mortgages and student loans. We’re in this together, so no matter how brilliant any one of us is, we always play nice with one another – no exceptions. 
• Be precise. Be relentless. We believe complacency breeds failure, so we set new goals as quickly as we achieve them. We persist in the face of adversity, learn from our mistakes, and push each other to continuously improve. The status-quo is kryptonite.
• Love our tech. Love our customers. Our platform solves a very complex problem in a currently underserved market. While everyone at Forma isn’t customer-facing, we’re all customer-focused. Maybe even slightly customer-obsessed. ­ 

Currently, Forma.ai does not use artificial intelligence as part of our recruitment process, specifically but not limited to the screening, filtering and shortlisting of applicants.  

Forma is a proud equal opportunity employer that is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive work environment. Every effort to accommodate candidates for accessibility will be made upon request. Information received related to accommodations will be addressed confidentially. We know that applying to a new role takes a lot of effort. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. There are many paths to a successful career and we’re looking forward to reading yours.

We thank all candidates for their interest however only qualified applicants will be shortlisted.