Senior Engineer, Backend Platform
Zum
Redwood City, CA, USA
USD 180k-260k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 8, 2026
Zūm is a rapidly expanding Series E startup backed by industry leaders Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Spark Capital, and GIC, with a bold mission to transform the stagnant school transportation industry. Operating in over 15 states across the United States—with flagship hubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle—we are actively extending our reach to the East Coast and Midwest regions. As a technology-driven company, we deploy cutting-edge solutions to manage and operate school district transportation systems while also launching our own charter platform and developing proprietary SaaS offerings. Additionally, we are spearheading a nationwide initiative to electrify school transportation fleets, simultaneously supporting local utilities by feeding much-needed energy back into the grid. We have been recognized as CNBC 50 disruptor, Financial Times 500 fastest growing companies, Fast Company World Changing Ideas.
This is a hybrid position based out of our headquarters in Redwood City, CA. You will be required to be on-site a minimum of 3 days per week (Monday - Thursday). We will only consider candidates already located in the Bay Area.
Who You Are
We are looking to add Senior Engineers to our backend engineering team. You will have opportunities for hands-on contribution in building Zūm’s technology platform. If you are a self-driven developer who enjoys solving complex problems and building impactful solutions, you will love this job.
What You'll Do
What to expect in this role:
You will be the owner of one or more backend platform verticals. You will get to build customer-facing product features and build/expand platform capabilities as you see fit for your needs to deliver business value. You will build microservices with the latest technologies like Kubernetes, Kafka, Postgres, gRPC, etc. You will get to actively contribute towards establishing good engineering practices - write high-quality, maintainable, testable, and scalable code, and perform code reviews. You will develop applications to improve visibility and traceability across the system using tools like Datadog, Rollbar, Segment, etc.
What You Bring To Zūm
Basic technical skills for this role:
$180,000 - $260,000 a year
Zūm Services, Inc. and all its subsidiaries provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
This is a hybrid position based out of our headquarters in Redwood City, CA. You will be required to be on-site a minimum of 3 days per week (Monday - Thursday). We will only consider candidates already located in the Bay Area.
Who You Are
We are looking to add Senior Engineers to our backend engineering team. You will have opportunities for hands-on contribution in building Zūm’s technology platform. If you are a self-driven developer who enjoys solving complex problems and building impactful solutions, you will love this job.
What You'll Do
What to expect in this role:
You will be the owner of one or more backend platform verticals. You will get to build customer-facing product features and build/expand platform capabilities as you see fit for your needs to deliver business value. You will build microservices with the latest technologies like Kubernetes, Kafka, Postgres, gRPC, etc. You will get to actively contribute towards establishing good engineering practices - write high-quality, maintainable, testable, and scalable code, and perform code reviews. You will develop applications to improve visibility and traceability across the system using tools like Datadog, Rollbar, Segment, etc.
What You Bring To Zūm
Basic technical skills for this role:
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or equivalent degrees
- 5+ years of industry experience as a Software Engineer
- Experience in building enterprise software platforms
- Hands-on architecture design and coding skills
- Experience working with relational and non-relational databases
- Excellence in one or more programming languages - Node.js, Java, Python
- Hands-on experience with deploying and managing apps on the cloud - AWS/Google
- Strong technical experience and eagerness to establish good engineering practices
- Good planning, organization, and decision-making skills
- Good communication with engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders
- Good sense of humor with a great ability to work with others
- Passionate about working for a mission-driven company
- Experience working in the transportation industry
- Strong experience with NodeJS and Typescript
$180,000 - $260,000 a year
Zūm Services, Inc. and all its subsidiaries provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
