Senior Software Engineer — Backend (Digital Customer)

Location: Los Angeles
Reports to: Software Engineering Manager

The Job

At sweetgreen, we’re building the digital backbone that powers how millions of customers order real food every day. As a Senior Backend Engineer on our Digital Customer team, you’ll design, build, and own the backend services that support ordering, loyalty, payments, personalization, and mission-critical vendor integrations.

This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys working deep in distributed systems, cares about reliability and data correctness, and thrives when owning complex services end-to-end—from API design through production observability.

You’ll work closely with Product, Frontend, Data, and Infrastructure partners to evolve our platform in ways that scale with both customer growth and business ambition.

Why We Need You (WWNY)

Sweetgreen’s customer experience depends on backend systems that are resilient, observable, and adaptable. As we expand personalization, loyalty, and real-time ordering capabilities, we need senior engineers who can:

• Design APIs and services that scale gracefully under peak demand

• Integrate safely with third-party vendors that sit directly in the ordering flow

• Raise the bar on reliability, monitoring, and operational excellence

• Influence architecture decisions that impact multiple teams and domains

Your work will directly affect how quickly customers can order, how reliably rewards are applied, and how confidently our teams can build on top of shared systems.

Here’s What You’ll Be Doing (HWYBD)

• Design and own backend services that power core customer experiences, with an emphasis on scalability, fault tolerance, and maintainability

• Lead technical design through clear, pragmatic technical design documents (TDDs) and thoughtful trade-off analysis

• Build and evolve APIs (primarily GraphQL, with REST where appropriate) that are intuitive, well-documented, and safe to consume across teams

• Integrate with external vendors in high-risk, high-impact parts of the customer journey (ordering, loyalty, payments, CRM, etc.)

• Improve system observability by implementing telemetry, alerts, and dashboards that enable fast diagnosis and recovery

• Champion best practices around data modeling, caching, error handling, and security

• Mentor other engineers through code reviews, pairing, and documentation

• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Frontend, Data, and Infrastructure teams to deliver end-to-end solutions

What Success Looks Like (First 90 Days)

You’ll be supported with a structured 90-day onboarding plan, defined in partnership with your manager, with clear goals and regular check-ins.

While tailored to your experience and domain, the plan generally follows this progression:

• First 30 days: Learn the system, tools, and workflows; build context on the end-to-end order lifecycle through cross-team introductions and onboarding tasks; begin working on sprint work and contributing through small, well-scoped tickets

• Days 31–60: Actively contribute to meeting sprint goals through ticket completion; participate in technical design discussions; grow ownership of one or more backend services or integrations

• Days 61–90: Feel comfortable identifying operational excellence (Opex) or developer experience (Dev Ex) opportunities; own larger epics or discovery work; contribute to shaping technical direction

By the end of 90 days, you’ll be a confident owner of backend systems and a trusted contributor to delivery and technical decision-making.

You Need These Qualifications (YNTQ)

• Significant professional experience building and owning backend systems in production, with strong proficiency in TypeScript, GraphQL, and AWS

• Solid grounding in computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented programming, data structures, algorithms, and system design

• Demonstrated ability to solve complex technical problems with pragmatic, scalable solutions

• Experience designing and evolving APIs and service contracts that support multiple consumers and use cases

• Comfort working within distributed systems, including understanding failure modes, performance trade-offs, and data consistency

• A strong sense of ownership and accountability for systems you build, from design through production support

• Passion for continuous learning, staying current with evolving backend technologies, and improving engineering practices over time

It Would Be Nice If (IWBNI)

• Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, or asynchronous processing

• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, or cloud-native deployment patterns

• Experience supporting or integrating with mission-critical third-party vendors

• Exposure to frontend systems sufficient to collaborate effectively with client teams (without being frontend-focused)

• Experience exploring or integrating AI-powered tools or services, such as LLM APIs, intelligent automation, or developer productivity tooling

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to thoughtfully evaluate new tools rather than chase trends blindly

• A strong instinct for operational excellence and long-term system stewardship

Engineering Culture at sweetgreen

We’re technology-agnostic but opinionated about quality. Our systems leverage tools like NestJS, GraphQL, Ruby, React Native, and AWS-based infrastructure. We prioritize sustainable architecture, clear documentation, and systems that teams can confidently build on.

Senior engineers at sweetgreen are trusted technical leaders. They influence architecture, mentor others, and help the organization move faster by making systems clearer, safer, and easier to evolve.

What you'll get:

• Highly competitive pay + bonus plan

• Three different medical plans to suit your and your family's needs

• Dental and Vision insurance

• Flexible PTO plan

• 401k program

• Employee HSA and FSA

• Complimentary greens

• An opportunity to make a real impact on the people around you, both by growing them and by connecting them to real food

• To live the sweetlife and celebrate your passion + purpose

• A collaborative team of people who live our core values and have your back

• A clear career path with opportunities for development, both personally and professionally

• Free sweetgreen swag

Come join the sweetlife!

About sweetgreen

sweetgreen is on a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food. We passionately believe that real food should be convenient and accessible to everyone. Every day in each sweetgreen, our 3,500 team members make food from scratch, using fresh ingredients and produce delivered that morning. And in our local communities, we’re committed to leaving people better than we found them. We’re in the business of feeding people, and we’re out to change what that means.

sweetgreen provides equal opportunities for everyone that works for us and everyone that applies to join our team, without regard to sex or gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, any service, past, present, or future, in the uniformed services of the United States (military or veteran status), or any other consideration protected by federal, state, or local law.

sweetgreen participates in the federal government's E-Verify program to determine employment eligibility. To learn more about the E-Verify program, please click here.

Salary range for this role:Starting salary range based on experience**$145,000—$160,000 USD**

Sweetgreen provides equal opportunities for all employees and applicants, without regard to sex or gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, race (including traits historically associated with race, such as hair texture and protective hairstyles), religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, any service in the uniformed services of the United States, or any other consideration protected by federal, state, or local law.

California residents: Review our applicant privacy notice HERE.

sweetgreen participates in the federal government's E-Verify program to determine employment eligibility. To learn more about the E-Verify program, please click here.