Backend Engineer, MTA at Resend — Remote Job Paying $150,000–$170,000

About the role

Resend is building an email platform that helps developers send emails reliably from their applications and services. As the company grows, it needs reliable infrastructure to handle high volumes of email while protecting its sending network from abuse and maintaining good delivery performance.

The Backend Engineer, MTA will help build and operate the systems that transfer emails to receiving mail servers. The work involves SMTP delivery, routing, retries, sending limits, IP management, email failure classification and production monitoring.

This position is suited to backend engineers who enjoy solving complex infrastructure problems, improving system reliability and taking ownership of critical services. Experience with email delivery is useful, but the company is also interested in candidates who are willing to learn more about email best practices.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate Resend's email transport infrastructure.
• Develop and improve SMTP delivery, Mail Transfer Agent systems, routing, retries and backoff strategies.
• Design sending limits at domain, email-provider, customer and IP-address levels.
• Build infrastructure for shared IP pools, dedicated IPs, IP warm-up and reputation-aware routing.
• Improve the classification of email bounces, deferrals, temporary failures and permanent delivery failures.
• Develop tools to investigate delivery problems by customer, domain, mailbox provider, route, IP address and message type.
• Improve system monitoring, observability, reliability and operational performance.
• Turn email reputation strategies into dependable backend systems.
• Work with Trust & Safety and Core Sending teams to protect the email network from abuse.
• Participate in incident response and provide on-call support for critical services.

Requirements

• Strong backend engineering experience.
• Experience with email, messaging, notifications, communications infrastructure or other high-volume delivery systems.
• Understanding of queues, background workers, retries, idempotency, rate limits, backpressure and distributed systems.
• Experience with, or a strong interest in, SMTP, MTAs, DNS, email bounces, deferrals, IP pools and mailbox-provider behaviour.
• A strong focus on reliability, observability and operational excellence.
• A willingness to take ownership and build simple, maintainable systems.

Additional strengths:

• Experience building or operating high-workload applications.
• Knowledge of email best practices, or willingness to develop that knowledge.
• Experience with TypeScript and Go.

A specific degree requirement or minimum number of years of experience is not stated in the vacancy.

Benefits

• Competitive advertised salary of US$150,000–$170,000, depending on location and experience.
• Fully remote working arrangement within the relevant region.
• Flexible working schedules.
• A modern technology stack including TypeScript, Go, AWS, PostgreSQL and Datadog.
• Autonomy to make technical decisions and deliver solutions.
• Ownership of problems and their solutions.
• A collaborative, low-ego engineering team.
• Opportunities to travel for team off-sites, conferences and meetups.

The vacancy does not specify visa sponsorship or a detailed position-specific benefits package. Applicants should confirm the applicable employment arrangements with Resend.

How to apply

1. Visit the official vacancy: https://resend.com/careers/053bde8f-294e-4cce-9d62-2301282120a2
2. Complete the online application with your name, email address and CV or résumé.
3. Explain why you want to join Resend.
4. Describe your professional experience with SMTP, MTAs, DNS, email bounces, deferrals, IP pools and mailbox-provider behaviour.
5. Provide your GitHub and LinkedIn profiles. Include a portfolio or personal website where relevant.
6. Answer the location and time-zone questions accurately, including the country where you are physically based.
7. Submit your application through the official careers page.

Important for Nigerian and other African applicants: This particular vacancy is listed for the Americas. Resend has also advertised a separate Europe-based version of the role, which applicants outside the Americas may wish to review: https://resend.com/careers/c4c5eb8c-e6ac-49f5-9dc7-a68ce0948929. Check the eligibility conditions on the relevant listing before applying.

Official careers page: https://resend.com/careers