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Forma.ai is a Series B startup revolutionizing sales compensation management, handling billions in annual managed commissions for enterprise customers like Edmentum, Stryker, and Autodesk. The TQM (Territory and Quota Management) team builds the planning layer of the platform, enabling sales operations teams to divide target markets among sellers, set targets, and manage changes throughout the year.
As a Staff Backend Engineer on the TQM team, you will lead the design of enterprise features including permissions, audit history, and approval workflows. You'll work across both frontend and backend systems to deliver strong product experiences, ensuring new product areas can reuse these features without rebuilding them. Your responsibilities include learning from customers how planning is governed within their organizations and translating that into clear delivery plans, deciding what not to build by cutting scope that doesn't serve customer needs, and setting the technical direction for how TQM features integrate with the broader Forma.ai platform.
You will write design documents and decision records that guide team development, review others' work with a high bar, stay hands-on by building the hardest parts yourself, and ensure production reliability. You'll contribute heavily to product ideation discussions and bring strong opinions to shape what gets built.
The team is low on meetings and high on accountability, with most members in EST, AST, PST, and Central time zones. The company uses AI coding tools extensively throughout design, implementation, and review, and expects you to have a clear view on how teams should work with them.
Tech stack: Frontend uses TypeScript, React, TanStack Router and Query, Tailwind, and shadcn/ui. Backend uses Kotlin, Spring Boot, and Postgres. Infrastructure includes AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and OpenTofu.
Success milestones: By 30 days, you'll have set up your environment, shipped several production changes across multiple product areas, learned core planning concepts, and shared initial views on system gaps. By 60 days, you'll have led the design of the permission model and plans for audit history and approvals, adjusted scope based on customer evidence, and improved team processes. By 90 days, you'll have delivered enterprise features to production, made decisions both Product and Engineering trust, and started contributing to new product area direction.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Extensive experience building and running production systems, including leading the design of a product area or platform
- Proficiency in Kotlin, Java, or similar language, with comfort working across the stack including TypeScript and React frontend
- Strong SQL, relational schema design, and data modeling skills, including experience with data models that evolved over many years
- Track record of good technical judgment; ability to describe major decisions, what you rejected, and how they held up
- Track record of good product judgment; demonstrated ability to shape what gets built and explain how you weighed customer value, cost, and risk
- Experience talking with customers or customer-facing teams and translating learnings into product decisions
- Regular and critical use of AI coding tools with a clear perspective on how teams should work with them
- Clear, precise writing; you don't expect others to read AI output and put equal effort into documentation
NICE TO HAVE:
- Experience with rule-driven systems, validation workflows, or approval and governance features
- Exposure to Sales Performance Management, RevOps, Incentive Compensation, or financial planning
- Experience with analytical databases or large-scale data processing
- Familiarity with AWS and Kubernetes
