Senior Software Engineer - Developer Experience & Tools

A lot about YOU

You have a strong focus on next-generation AI-powered development—comfortable not only with AI-augmented coding but with creating sharable skills, pipelines, and autonomous agents that power all parts of the modern SDLC. You are a developer at heart, but you highly value improving the engineering experience itself, helping peers focus on delivering complex user experiences while minimizing overhead and manual toil. You are intimately familiar with systems across the development stack, including CI/CD systems, cloud platforms, and generative developer tooling. You prioritize driving tasks to completion, collaborating across squads to achieve high-performance results, thinking through architectural edge cases, and teaching through technical leadership. If you are interested in joining a world-class team of highly collaborative engineering professionals who care about making developer lives highly productive, then we’d like to talk to you.

Responsibilities:

Architect, build, and optimize developer productivity tools leveraging multiple AI tools (e.g. Claude, Cursor, Vertex AI) to provide contextual code suggestions, automated testing, and smart documentation.

Identify and implement AI-driven efficiencies in the developer inner-loop, transitioning manual SDLC processes into intelligent, agentic workflows.

Establish automated review systems and validation frameworks to verify, clean, and monitor the quality of AI-generated software architectures and outputs.

Define, track, and analyze key developer experience (DevEx) metrics to isolate friction points and systematically improve engineering velocity.

Take independent ownership of major phases of the SDLC and platform environments, directly impacting the day-to-day workflow of hundreds of Yahoo Mail engineers.

Collaborate with engineering leads and cross-functional teams to design, prototype, and implement elegant solutions for complex developer pain points.

Solve complex and multifaceted software problems with guidance only in highly complex, ambiguous situations.

Act as a technical role model and mentor for peers, executing high-quality code reviews and promoting platform engineering best practices.

Lead design discussions, share systemic engineering insights, and build a culture of continuous learning and AI-assisted innovation.

Basic Qualifications:

BS in Computer Science (or equivalent) with 6+ years of professional software development experience.

Strong core computer science fundamentals, including advanced competencies in data structures, algorithms, and modular software design.

Proficiency in at least one modern programming language such as Java, Python, or Golang.

Hands-on experience integrating AI coding assistants, code generation tools, or specialized LLM agents into active development pipelines to accelerate debugging, architectural design, and code refactoring.

Experience building robust internal tools for engineering organizations, including scalable backend microservices, unified CLIs, and intuitive web interfaces.

Deep understanding of modern software development practices, design patterns, continuous integration (CI), and deployment architecture.

Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to lead small project teams or distinct workstreams across geographically distributed teams.

Strong technical empathy for developers and a commitment to eliminating roadblocks, delays, and friction in the software development lifecycle.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience deploying, fine-tuning, or engineering structured prompts for foundation models within enterprise cloud environments like Google Vertex AI.

Experience with CI/CD tools and systems tools such as GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or Jenkins.

Solid experience managing large-scale cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), with a focus on GCP.

Strong familiarity with Unix/Linux development and deployment environments.

Practical understanding of platform engineering principles, developer portals, and Agile development methodologies (Scrum/Kanban).

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoopolicies;exercising sound judgment;working effectively, safely and inclusively with others;exhibiting trustworthinessandmeeting expectations;and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form (www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html) or call +1.866.772.3182. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $128,250.00 - $266,875.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience.The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.

Currently work for Yahoo? Please apply on our internal career site.