Backend Engineer, Picnic - Los Angeles, Ca

Who we are  Picnic is reinventing meals at work. We partner with top local restaurants and deliver lunches to companies from 20 to more than 10,000 employees. This allows us to deliver high-quality, individually packaged meals without fees or tips. The result is a joyful experience for employees, teams, and entire organizations. Companies can design their employee food offerings, ranging from simple lunches to sophisticated meal programs. We are obsessing about each company, each customer, each restaurant, and each individual order. Picnic creates a more sustainable model for restaurants, helping local heroes to succeed. Check us out: trypicnic.com or Picnic mobile apps.  Picnic’s early business signals have been exceptionally strong. It has been adopted organically by companies from Banking to Manufacturing, from Tech to Government. Customers are discovering and advocating for the product before any marketing. Since launch, we have grown exponentially and are now entering the 10 → 100 scale phase as we expand across major North American markets. Picnic owns the full stack that powers workplace food delivery: client applications for employees, company managers, kitchen operations, and courier operations. AI-powered services are tying them together. This vertical ownership allows us to tightly integrate ordering, logistics, and operations to deliver reliable, cost-efficient services at scale. We are solving one of the most comprehensive, and therefore complex, meal delivery problems. We need YOU to help us build it at scale!   About the role We’re looking for a Backend Engineer to help architect and scale Picnic’s real-time food ordering and operations platforms. This is a high-impact role for someone who enjoys ambiguity, thrives in complex systems, and is excited to iterate and improve real-world operations. You’ll work across backend services that support web and mobile surfaces, partner closely with frontend, mobile, product, and operations teams, and help define how we design, build, and scale backend systems at Picnic. What You’ll Do Write high-quality, well-tested code in languages like Java and Go, set a strong bar for engineering excellence, and manage and sustain a full software lifecycle Lead backend initiatives, ensuring scalability and reliability across domains such as food ordering, payments, discounts, and loyalty Drive the development with a strong focus on reliability-by-design, observability, and testability Design scalable databases, analyze data using SQL Mentor and uplevel engineers through technical leadership, reviews, and hands-on collaboration What we’re looking for Proficiency in backend programming languages like Java and Go Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis) Experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure Understanding of RESTful APIs, microservices, and distributed systems A high-performance, hands-on engineer who sets a high bar for code quality, reliability, and operational excellence Deep understanding of backend system design, APIs, data stores, concurrency, and distributed systems Experience collaborating closely with frontend, mobile, product, data, and business partners Passion for product impact and building systems that directly