{"id":589845,"url":"https://alion.io/job/coupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra","title":"Director - Backend Engineering - AI Infra","company":{"id":239,"name":"Coupang","domain":"coupang.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/coupang","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":83,"open_postings":105,"ghost_share":0.086,"stale_share":0.181,"repost_share":0.124,"time_to_fill_p50_days":71,"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Bengaluru, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":62000,"max_usd":126000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":50},"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Ansible","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"HPC","optional":false},{"name":"InfiniBand","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Nginx","optional":false},{"name":"NVLink","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-05T13:11:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-20","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T18:44:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":151,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":150},"description":"Job Description: Director of Backend Engineering (AI Infrastructure)\nCompany Introduction\nWe exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did I ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we are collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar commerce industry from the ground up and establishing an unparalleled reputation for being leading and reliable force in South Korean commerce.\nWe are proud to have the best of both worlds - a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.\nRole Overview\nWe are seeking a visionary Director of Backend Engineering to lead the teams responsible for the software \"brain\" that manages our global AI Physical Infrastructure. You will oversee the development of the SDN orchestrators, automated fleet management systems, and the high-performance storage backends that power our AI training and inference clusters.\nYour mission is to abstract the complexity of specialized hardware (NVIDIA/HPC) into a seamless, automated, and hyper-reliable cloud platform.\nKey Responsibilities\n1. Strategic Leadership & Fleet Orchestration\nSoftware-Defined Infrastructure: Lead the design and delivery of an SDN Orchestrator to automate complex GPU networking (InfiniBand/RoCE/NVLink) and core DC routing.\nFleet Health Automation: Oversee the development of backend services for GPU Health & Fault Detection, automating the lifecycle from burn-in and diagnostics to global RMA workflows.\n Capacity & Traffic Engineering: Drive the backend logic for global traffic routing, load balancing (NGINX/Kong), and IPAM to ensure zero-bottleneck training environments.\n2. Data & Storage Systems\nHPC Data Pipelines: Collaborate with storage engineers to build backend interfaces for Parallel File Systems (Lustre, Weka, VAST etc.), ensuring high-throughput data delivery to compute nodes.\nStorage Durability: Direct the backend strategy for AI Object Storage, focusing on high durability and low-latency retrieval for massive datasets.\n3. Engineering Excellence\nScalable Architecture: Act as the final technical authority for AI Infra Architecture, ensuring systems are resilient, multi-region, and capable of sub-millisecond coordination.\nDevOps & IaC Culture: Champion a \"Hardware-as-Code\" mindset, utilizing Python, Ansible, and Terraform to eliminate manual intervention in DC operations.\n4. Team Development\nLead a multi-disciplinary org including Backend Developers, SDN Engineers, and Infra Ops teams, AI Infra Engineering\nEstablish 24/7 L1/L2/L3 operational standards to maintain > 99.99% availability of the AI fleet.\nRequired Qualifications\n Experience: 15+ years in Backend Engineering, with at least 5 years in a leadership role managing complex infrastructure (Cloud, FinTech, or HPC).\nDeep Infrastructure Knowledge: Proven experience with Linux internals, hardware-software interfaces (drivers/firmware), and distributed systems.\nNetworking Mastery: Solid understanding of L2/L3 networking, and ideally, specialized fabrics like InfiniBand or RoCE.\nThe Stack: Professional proficiency in Python, Go, or C++, and deep experience with Terraform, Kubernetes, and Ansible.\n Large-Scale Data: Experience managing high-performance storage backends (GPFS, Lustre, or equivalent parallel systems).\n Hardware Savvy: You don't just write code; you understand power envelopes, liquid cooling constraints, and GPU architecture (NVIDIA/HPE/Dell).\nPreferred Skills\nExperience building custom SDN controllers or orchestration layers from scratch.\nDirect experience with NVIDIA or GPUDirect technologies.\nPrevious success in a \"Hyper-scale\" environment (AWS, Azure, GCP, Meta, AI Cloouds etc.).\nRecruitment Process\nApplication Review - Phone Interview - Onsite (or Virtual Onsite) Interview - Offer\nThe exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.\nInterview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.\nDetails to Consider\nThis job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.\nCoupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.\nThose eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.\nPrivacy Notice\nYour personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below.\nhttps://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/","description_format":"text","description_chars":5169,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","E-commerce Platforms","Delivery","Marketplaces"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T09:39:18Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-22T08:24:16Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-30T08:17:28Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-10-01T07:18:20Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-10-01T22:34:40Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":21,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.763,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":150,"expected_fill_days":71,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/coupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/coupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T20:03:49Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":2780,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":239},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=239"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcoupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcoupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcoupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/coupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcoupang-director-backend-engineering-ai-infra"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":589845}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"coupang.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":589845},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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