job summary
You have experience operating distributed, high-volume backend services in production, and you know how to deploy them and keep them running
You are comfortable triaging incidents on systems you did not build, using runbooks, dashboards and logs
You have hands-on experience with Java and/or Python backend services, Kubernetes, and a major cloud provider (Google Cloud Platform preferred)
You have experience with monitoring and alerting tools such as PagerDuty, Grafana and PromethePromQL
You write clear documentation and enjoy leaving systems better than you found them
You are comfortable using AI coding tools to speed up maintenance and migration work
You communicate clearly and work well asynchronously with distributed teams
location: Telecommute
job type: Contract
salary: $100 - 107 per hour
work hours: 8am to 5pm
education: Bachelors
responsibilities
The Personalization (PZN) team makes deciding what to play next on Spotify easier and more enjoyable for every listener. We seek to understand the world of music, podcasts and audiobooks better than anyone else so that we can make great recommendations to every individual and keep the world listening. Every day, hundreds of millions of people all over the world use the products we build which include destinations like Home and Search as well as original playlists such as Made For You, Discover Weekly and Daily Mix.
The SeshGen product area builds and runs the systems behind Spotify's generative and interactive listening experiences, including AI DJ, AI Playlist and personalized sessions. SeshGen owns over 1,000 backend services, and many of them are stable and in maintenance mode. We are building a dedicated contractor team to own the operation and maintenance of these services, so our product squads can focus on new features.
What You'll Do
Be part of the SeshGen goalie rotation for maintenance-mode services: respond to and triage PagerDuty alerts, apply fixes (restarts, rollbacks, scaling) and escalate to the owning squad when needed
Keep services up to date: dependency updates and security patches on a quarterly cycle, and infrastructure upgrades such as Kubernetes version bumps and Google Cloud Platform migrations
Reduce alert noise: tune thresholds, fix auto-resolving alerts, set up alert grouping, and turn off alerts that are not actionable
Identify unused services and decommission them safely using Backstage tooling
Write and maintain runbooks and service documentation for every service in scope
Keep the service catalog accurate: component ownership, reliability tiers and PagerDuty routing
Work closely with SeshGen engineers and engineering managers through handovers, rotation chapter meetings and alert reviews
Reduce tech debt and complexity if needed
Drive architecture discussions, create system design in alignment with the internal teams
Driving scoping and roadmapping of the technical execution
Track progress, escalate issues, help to unblock the team
Who You Are
You have experience operating distributed, high-volume backend services in production, and you know how to deploy them and keep them running
You are comfortable triaging incidents on systems you did not build, using runbooks, dashboards and logs
You have hands-on experience with Java and/or Python backend services, Kubernetes, and a major cloud provider (Google Cloud Platform preferred)
You have experience with monitoring and alerting tools such as PagerDuty, Grafana and PromethePromQL
You write clear documentation and enjoy leaving systems better than you found them
You are comfortable using AI coding tools to speed up maintenance and migration work
You communicate clearly and work well asynchronously with distributed teams
qualifications
Hard Skills - Senior-level Java backend development, Operating and maintaining distributed, high-volume production systems and Scaling systems and removing technical debt.
Soft Skills - Strong written and verbal communication, Effective prioritization skills and Cross-team collaboration and alignment
skills
AI coding tools
AI
backend services
Python backend
Grafana
Java
Kubernetes
alerting tools
PagerDuty
Prometheus
runbooks
reliability
architecture
dashboards
decommission
infrastructure upgrades
service documentation
maintenance
Personalization
playlists
Playlist
communicate clearly
service catalog
system design
triage
clear documentation