Senior Staff Software Engineer (Gateway Services, Service Mesh)

Company Introduction

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.

We 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.

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.

Team Overview

The Gateway Services team builds Coupang’s traffic infrastructure layer powered by Service Mesh. This platform enables secure, reliable, and scalable service-to-service communication across Coupang’s microservices ecosystem.

Our scope includes service discovery, load balancing, traffic resiliency, traffic management, failure recovery, and observability. We build foundational platform capabilities that help engineering teams operate services safely and efficiently at scale.

What You Will Do

• Lead the design and evolution of Coupang’s Service Mesh and traffic infrastructure architecture for large-scale distributed systems.
• Build and operate core infrastructure components for traffic management using technologies such as Istio, Envoy, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and SPIFFE.
• Develop critical platform components in Go, Rust, or C++ with a strong focus on scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Drive key platform capabilities across traffic control, resiliency, workload and service management, failure recovery, and observability.
• Partner with technical leaders across Platform and stakeholder teams to define strategy, align priorities, and deliver high-impact infrastructure solutions.
• Simplify complex infrastructure problems into practical, extensible, and operationally sound solutions.
• Raise the bar on engineering excellence through strong system design, high-quality implementation, and robust operational practices.
• Investigate deep system issues, address root causes, and improve the overall reliability and operability of the platform.
• Influence engineering direction by advocating best practices in traffic management, service communication, and large-scale platform design.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 12+ years of professional software development experience, including 2+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Strong experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with Service Mesh technologies, especially Istio and/or Envoy.
• Experience designing and implementing traffic management solutions for high-scale systems.
• Strong development skills in at least one of the following languages: Go, Rust, or C++.
• Experience building cloud-native infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Strong technical judgment, architectural thinking, and the ability to lead complex cross-team initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep understanding of networking fundamentals, including virtual networks, route tables, subnets, gateways, and service-to-service communication patterns.
• Experience with Kubernetes-based platform architecture and cloud-native operational models.
• Experience with security and identity frameworks such as SPIFFE, mTLS, or zero-trust service communication.
• Strong understanding of observability, resiliency, and fault isolation in large-scale systems.
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment while leading the delivery of complex platform capabilities.

Recruitment Process

• Application Review - 1st Interview (Virtual) - 2nd Interview (Virtual) - Offer
• The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
• Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.

Details to Consider

• This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
• Coupang 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.
• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
• Job titles and responsibilities may be subject to change depending on the candidate’s overall experience, etc. This will be communicated to the candidate at the appropriate time before the offer.

Privacy Notice

• Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below.

https://www.coupang.jobs/en/privacy-policy/

Document Return Policy

• This notification is given pursuant to Article 11 (6) of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act.
• A job applicant, who has applied but not been finally selected for a position at Coupang (the “Company”), may request the Company to return his/her hiring documents submitted pursuant to the Fair Hiring Procedure Act. However, this will not apply where the hiring documents were submitted via the website of the Company or e-mail, or where the job applicant submitted those documents voluntarily without a request from the Company. In addition, if the hiring documents were destroyed due to a natural disaster or any other reasons not attributable to the Company, such documents will be deemed to have been returned to the job applicant.
• A job applicant who wishes to request the return of his/her hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above should fill out a “Request for Return of Hiring Documents” [Annex Form No. 3 in the Enforcement Rule of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act] and submit the request to the Company (Coupang Recruiting Team, Tower 730, 570 Songpa-daero, Songpa-gu, Seoul). In such case, within fourteen (14) days from the date of identifying the receipt of the request, the Company will send the hiring documents to the job applicant’s designated address via registered mail. Please be informed that the job applicant is required to pay the postage on the registered mail.
• In preparation for a job applicant’s request for the return of hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above, the Company shall retain the original hiring documents submitted by the job applicant for 180 days from the completion of the recruiting process. If no request is made until the end of this period, all of his/her hiring documents will be destroyed immediately in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act.
• Hiring may be restricted in case the legal qualifications required for hiring and work performance are not met.

Equal Opportunities for All

Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. Our unprecedented success could not be possible without the valuable inputs of our globally diverse team.