Software Engineer 2, Platform

Welcome to Our World — we’ve been leading the charge in the affiliate industry since 1998. As CJ (formerly Commission Junction), we operate one of the largest and most reliable partnership platforms, specializing in performance marketing. Based in Santa Barbara, California, we connect over 3,800 global brands with reputable publishers across retail, travel, finance, technology, and home services. Backed by Publicis Groupe, we leverage data, cutting-edge technology, and strategic expertise to create genuine connections between brands and consumers.

A Quick Peek at Affiliate Marketing: Think of your last online purchase—whether influenced by an influencer’s discount or a trusted review site. Affiliate publishers likely played a role, and CJ connects brands with these publishers to create valuable resources for shoppers.

About CJ Engineering

At CJ, we are passionate about software engineering. We build high-quality, maintainable software with a focus on common sense, simplicity, and efficiency. Our engineers practice critical thinking, challenge each other regardless of title, and value the wisdom of the team. Here’s what sets CJ engineers apart:

• Engineering autonomy: Business decisions are made by business people, and technical decisions are made by technical people.
• Full stack: Gain competence in every aspect of software engineering—frontend, database, requirements analysis, testing, and technology selection.
• Clean, maintainable code: Code is read more often than it’s written, so we prioritize writing it well from the start.
• Pairing: High-quality code comes from close collaboration, so we pair by default.
• TDD: Quality is baked into our process through Test-Driven Development.
• Ownership: Engineers own the full lifecycle of what they build—from design and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and on-call rotations.
• Operational Excellence: We embrace Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, automation, and observability to build reliable systems and deliver software safely and efficiently.
• We believe in Agile values, incremental development, and constant experimentation. We’re committed to exploring how AI can amplify our productivity, viewing it as a force multiplier—not a replacement for good engineering.

About the Role

As a Software Engineer 2 on the Engineering Experience (EngExp) platform team, you’ll help run and improve the platform powering CJ’s production systems across multiple AWS regions. The "platform" is broad—it includes Kubernetes clusters, observability stacks, CI/CD pipelines, AWS networking, and access systems. EngExp owns all of it. This is a hands-on, operationally focused role where you’ll take on well-scoped work across these systems, ship it end-to-end, and build deep expertise alongside senior engineers.

Responsibilities

The systems you’ll work on include:

• Observability & monitoring: Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry across production regions. You’ll add and tune metrics, dashboards, and alert rules, learning how these tools behave at scale.
• Kubernetes & cloud infrastructure: Multi-region EKS clusters, including routine maintenance, node group changes, controller upgrades, and add-on configuration.
• AWS networking: VPCs, subnets, CIDR management, security groups, and Route53. You’ll help maintain production networking and learn the multi-region topology.
• CI/CD & artifact management: GitLab CI/CD pipelines, GitOps delivery via ArgoCD, and the Nexus artifact repository.
• Access & identity: IAM roles, service accounts, Vault-managed secrets, and fulfilling access requests—then automating repetitive ones.
• Cost observability: OpenCost and cleanup work (e.g., orphaned EBS volumes) to ensure costs are attributable.

What you’ll do:

• Pick up well-scoped platform work across the systems above and ship it end-to-end.
• Build and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipelines and GitOps delivery through ArgoCD.
• Write and review infrastructure-as-code with Terraform for AWS resources.
• Add and tune observability—Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, Alertmanager rules.
• Help fulfill and automate recurring requests (ingress, DNS, service accounts, IAM roles).
• Investigate platform incidents, document findings, and learn to recognize common failure modes (e.g., IP exhaustion, resource limits).

Technologies We Use

• Kubernetes / EKS (multi-cluster, multi-region), Karpenter, cert-manager, external-dns
• Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana, OpenTelemetry (with long-term storage/sharding for Prometheus)
• AWS networking (VPC, VPC peering, Transit Gateway, Route53, NAT Gateway, security groups, subnet/CIDR design)
• Terraform, AWS (IAM, EKS, S3, EBS)
• ArgoCD, GitLab CI/CD, Nexus (artifact registry), Docker, container image build pipelines
• Vault, OpenCost

Requirements

• 1-2 years of experience in software or infrastructure engineering.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Comfortable in the terminal and reading YAML, Terraform, or similar declarative config.
• Some exposure to cloud (AWS or equivalent) and containers—production Kubernetes experience is a plus.
• Genuine interest in operating real systems, especially observability, and growing deep expertise.
• Willingness to learn how systems fail and ask questions when something looks off.
• Effective communication; enjoys pair programming and code review.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on exposure to Kubernetes, Terraform, or GitLab/GitHub CI/CD.
• Experience with Prometheus/Grafana or another metrics stack.
• Scripting in Python, Bash, or Go.

What Success Looks Like

• You reliably deliver well-scoped platform work end-to-end with decreasing oversight.
• You’re building genuine depth in at least one system we own, not just familiarity with the tools.
• Other engineers find the workflows you touch easier and more predictable to use.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and 401K matching.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible time off without accrual hassles.
• Generous paid holidays.
• Company-sponsored team-building events.
• Employee Referral Program and annual recognition awards.
• Hybrid work arrangements (3 days/week in office) for optimal work-life balance.
• Parental bonding leave and backup care options for children/elders.
• Employee discount program and International SOS program for global support.
• Business Resource Groups for connecting over shared interests.

Pay

Compensation range: USD $73,150.00 - USD $107,744.00/year. Pay is determined based on skills, qualifications, and experience, consistent with applicable law.

Schedule

This is a hybrid role requiring 3 days per week in a CJ office location.