Senior Software Engineer, Life360

• 6+ years of backend software engineering experience
• Strong proficiency with Java and Spring Boot (this is our primary stack)
• Experience with Apache Kafka or similar distributed streaming platforms
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts: consistency, fault tolerance, replication, and data durability
• Comfortable with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and containerized deployments
• Familiarity with agentic workflows, prompt/eval engineering
• Problem-solving mindset - You structure ambiguous problems precisely before reaching for a tool, AI or otherwise
• Collaborative approach - You communicate clearly, work well across teams, and value diverse perspectives
• Ownership mentality - You take responsibility for your work from design through production and beyond
• AI-native working style - You use AI tooling (Claude Code or equivalent) as a genuine development partner: delegating discrete tasks, reviewing outputs critically, and running parallel workstreams rather than hand-holding one agent at a time
• Thoughtful communication - You can explain technical tradeoffs and articulate ideas effectively
• We believe culture fit and problem-solving ability matter more than checking every technical box. We're happy to help you grow into areas where you have less experience

Desirable

• The Messaging team owns the backbone of Life360’s real-time infrastructure, powering the event streaming and data pipelines that keep millions of families connected
• We process billions of events every day, enabling everything from location updates to safety alerts through reliable, high-throughput streaming systems
• Our work sits at the center of Life360’s technical ecosystem. We collaborate closely with mobile, backend, and data teams to build scalable, resilient infrastructure while tackling complex distributed systems challenges like schema evolution, data consistency, zero-downtime migrations, and platform reliability at scale
• We are a platform-focused, AI-Native team
• AI is a core collaborator across the full product lifecycle: messaging architecture, protocol design, performance at scale, and incident response
• We move faster, build more resiliently, and go deeper on the hard problems of distributed messaging because of it
• The team is currently leading major innovation initiatives, including migrating from MSK to Confluent Cloud, managing organization-wide schema registries and protocol buffer definitions, and building the next generation of streaming services
• Our stack includes Kafka and Kafka Streams, Spring Boot microservices, Go-based tooling, and a modern cloud-native platform on AWS
• You'll help define and deliver the next generation of Kafka-first streaming infrastructure, driving the solution to meet the next company goal for high availability on scale
• As a Senior Software Engineer on the Messaging team, you'll build and maintain the streaming infrastructure that powers Life360's real-time features
• This role is hands-on and collaborative - you'll design services, write code, troubleshoot production issues, and help shape the team's technical direction
• We're looking for someone who enjoys working in a distributed systems environment, values clear communication, and thrives on solving complex problems alongside a small, focused team
• We work AI-natively - you'll be expected to direct AI agents as a core part of your daily workflow, not as an afterthought
• Design, build, and maintain streaming services using Kafka, Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud Stream
• Develop and manage Kafka connectors for data integration (DynamoDB, S3, custom sinks/sources)
• Own schema management and evolution using Protocol Buffers, Schema Registry, and multi-language code generation
• Support ongoing platform migrations, including multi-cluster consumption patterns and infrastructure transitions
• Build monitoring, observability, and operational tooling to ensure system reliability
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on API design, data contracts, and integration patterns
• Write infrastructure as code using Terraform and automate deployments through CI/CD pipelines
• Participate in on-call rotation and incident response
• Mentor team members and contribute to team processes, technical standards, and help evolve the team's AI-native engineering practices
• Work with AI (Claude Code) as a first-class collaborator - orchestrating agents to scaffold services, generate IaC, draft schema definitions, and accelerate code review
• Apply agentic workflows to reduce overall cycle time and operational overhead