Staff Software Engineer, Optimal Dynamics
Backend
$190-220k
+ Equity
More information about location
AI for logistical planning
Open for applications
AI for logistical planning
21-100 employees
Open for applications
$190-220k
+ Equity
More information about location
21-100 employees
Company mission
To automate and optimize the logistics industry through High-Dimensional Artificial Intelligence.
Role
Who you are
- Educated: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent technical experience
- Experienced: Staff-level expertise in Infrastructure & Platform Engineering
- Proven track record of scaling cloud-native systems
- Strong Python 3 expertise
- Strong AWS expertise
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures (Kafka or similar)
- Hands-on experience with IaC tools (i.e. Terraform, CloudFormation), observability, monitoring, & incident response
- Optimization-Driven: Proven track record of improving DevEx by leveling up tooling, pipelines, & automation
- Experience improving monorepo developer workflows (Bazel, Buck, Pants)
- Security-Focused: Knowledge of compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, etc.) and how to operationalize them
- Experience leading security initiatives(i.e. hardening environments; building secure-by-default workflows)
- Leader: A history of mentoring engineers and shaping technical direction across teams
Desirable
- Experience with service mesh/container orchestration (Kubernetes, Istio, etc.)
- Background in transportation systems (TMS, ELD) or other complex, mission-critical domains
- Experience implementing cost monitoring, forecasting, and optimization strategies to ensure infrastructure efficiency and cloud spend accountability
What the job involves
- Optimal Dynamics is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Backend, within our Platform Systems team who will lead the architecture and strategy of our platform infrastructure
- The role spans internal tool Development, Infrastructure, and Security, ensuring that our engineering team can build, deploy, & operate systems with speed, safety, & confidence
- As an individual contributor & technical leader, you’ll define best practices, guide cross-functional initiatives, & design systems that scale with our rapidly growing platform
- You’ll partner closely across engineering & product teams, balancing reliability & velocity while mentoring others & raising the overall technical bar
- Platform Architecture & Evolution: Design, implement, and scale core infrastructure to ensure reliability, performance, and security
- Developer Experience (DevEx): Build and improve tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and workflows, optimizing developer productivity and minimizing friction
- Security & Compliance: Champion security-by-design principles, implementing controls that safeguard systems and data without slowing innovation
- Mentorship & Influence: Serve as a technical leader across teams, coaching engineers, and driving alignment on platform strategy
- Collaboration: Partner with product and engineering leaders, balancing speed, cost, and resilience in every decision
- At Optimal Dynamics, our entire infrastructure runs on Amazon AWS, leveraging a wide range of services including DynamoDB, Aurora, SSM, and SQS to power our intelligent logistics platform
- Our tech stack includes:
- Backend & AI: Python 3 and Java
- Frontend: JavaScript/TypeScript for our web-based SPA
- Data Stack: Trino, Dagster, dbt, DuckDB, and Preset
- We follow modern development best practices with all code stored on GitHub. Every pull request undergoes thorough code reviews, is fully unit tested, and deployed through our CI/CD pipeline for continuous quality assurance
- We are a team of bright, kind, and solution-oriented people focused on creating value for our customers. We can solve problems individually, but understand that the best solutions are found when the team brainstorms ideas together
- We are excited about balancing the need to deploy new solutions quickly and designing solutions that are secured, reliable, maintainable, and scalable for the long run
Our take
Market volatility and overburdening are continual problems in the freight industry. Now that the boom in eCommerce has home-deliveries on the rise, costly and inefficient ‘last-mile’ journeys are increasing too. So, Optimal Dynamics has stepped in, looking to revolutionize freight through high-dimensional artificial intelligence.
CORE.ai, Optimal Dynamics' proprietary software-as-service product, helps shippers optimize logistics using flexible, open API protocol to create probabilistic profit-maximizing strategies. This software gives them a material competitive edge in this respect, as it tackles the kind of growing uncertainty and complexity the industry is grappling with.
With record growth, doubled revenue and customers, and a $40M Series C behind it, Optimal Dynamics sure is hitting its stride. This funding sets the company up to expand its platform and grow its team even further, putting Optimal Dynamics in a strong position to shape the future of the logistics industry.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
1% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
May 2025
$33.3m
LATE VC
Apr 2022
$33m
SERIES B
Total funding: $88.7m
Company benefits
- FLexible Work Environment: We believe the office is a tool for meetings and connections, not a requirement to get work done.
- Paid Time Off: We understand the importance of nurturing life outside of the workplace, which is why we offer all full-time employees 10 paid holidays & unlimited time off to recharge and refresh.
- Paid Parental Leave: All parents, including those adopting or fostering children, are eligible to take up to 12 weeks of paid parental time off for the primary caregiver and up to 4 weeks for the secondary caregiver.
- Extensive Health Coverage: Our Employee Assistance Program supports employees through personal and/or work-related problems that may impact their job performance, health, mental and emotional well-being.
- Health & Wellness: We care about our employees' overall health and wellbeing. As part of Optimal Dynamic’s Wellness Program, we offer all employees a fitness membership reimbursement of up to $125/month.
- Flexible Spending Account: Use pre-tax dollars to pay for out-of-pocket healthcare or dependent care expenses.
- Commuter Benefits: For commuter expenses, use pre-tax dollars that are deducted directly from your paycheck, so you can commute with a little less effort.
- Learn from the Best: Whether you’re a UI developer, machine learning engineer, or decision scientist, we give periodic courses on advanced decision analytics, the next level of AI, taught by world leading AI visionary, Warren Powell.
Company HQ
NoMad, New York, NY
Leadership
Daniel Powell
(Co-Founder & CEO)After studying at Elon University and interning at Merrill Lynch and Princeton, Daniel co-founded Optimal Dynamics in August 2014. Since then, he has served as CEO full-time.
Warren Powell
(Co-Founder & Chief Innovation Officer)Previously, Warren was a Professor and Director at Princeton University for 39 years.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 4 more jobs at Optimal Dynamics