Contract Backend Developer Jobs in Phoenix, AZ (NOW HIRING)

GitKraken Software Engineer: The AI Problem Solver

The Company

GitKraken is the developer experience platform of choice for more than 40 million developers and 100,000 organizations globally. Combining built-in AI and powerful workflow orchestration, GitKraken empowers development teams to eliminate unnecessary toil, streamline collaboration, and accelerate productivity.

GitKraken’s products support developers and engineering teams across desktop, command line, IDE, web, and mobile environments, with integrations across leading Git providers, issue tracking tools, and AI solutions.

The Role

GitKraken is hiring Full Stack Product Engineers to help build GitKraken Insights, our new engineering intelligence product for software teams.

Insights helps engineering leaders understand how work actually moves through their organization: PR flow, DORA metrics, code quality, developer sentiment, AI tool adoption, agent impact, where teams are getting stuck, and how to track spend. It is a brand-new product with strong customer interest, which means there is a meaningful product surface to shape and real technical work to do.

You will work across React, Go, PostgreSQL, AWS, and GitHub-based workflows. This role is for engineers who can take an ambiguous product problem, understand the user's needs, design the technical path, and ship the feature end to end.

We are hiring across levels. What matters most is strong engineering judgment, product sense, clear communication, and the ability to build software that real developers and engineering leaders can trust.

What You'll Do

• Turn ambiguous product ideas into scoped technical plans and working software.
• Build interfaces that make complex engineering data understandable, trustworthy, and actionable.
• Help shape a new product area with active customer demand and plenty of room for product judgment.
• Build full stack product features across React, Go, PostgreSQL, and AWS.
• Design APIs, data models, and user experiences for engineering intelligence workflows.
• Write maintainable, tested code and participate seriously in design reviews, code reviews, and production readiness.
• Communicate tradeoffs clearly in PRs, technical notes, and team discussions.

What You'll Bring

• Product judgment: you can reason about users, scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs.
• Experience building production software across frontend and backend systems.
• Backend engineering experience, ideally with Go or the ability to ramp quickly in Go.
• Experience designing APIs with clear contracts, validation, error handling, and sensible edge case behavior.
• Hands-on experience using AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex) as part of your day-to-day flow, with a sense of when to trust them and when not to.
  
• Comfort working with Git, GitHub, pull requests, CI/CD, and code review workflows.
• Solid understanding of relational databases, SQL, migrations, and PostgreSQL fundamentals.
• Strong React and TypeScript skills.
• Clear written communication and a habit of making your reasoning visible.

Bonus Points

• Product judgment: you can reason about users, scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs.
• Clear written communication in English and a habit of making your reasoning visible.
• Experience turning ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and shipped product.
• Full stack engineering experience across frontend, backend, and data.
• React and TypeScript skills, with backend experience in Go or the ability to ramp quickly.
• Experience using AI coding tools or agentic coding workflows to plan, build, test, review, or debug software.
• SQL and relational data modeling fundamentals, ideally with PostgreSQL.
• Experience designing APIs with clear contracts, validation, error handling, and thoughtful edge case behavior.
• Comfort working with Git, GitHub, pull requests, CI/CD, and code review workflows.

How You'll Be Rewarded

• Excellence — Competitive compensation with annual performance-based pay increases
• Balance — Flexible Paid-Time-Off Policy & paid company holidays (chosen by our employees)
• Parent life — Generous paid parental leave
• Pets — Pet insurance plan (with no exclusions)
• Health — Health, dental, and vision insurance with competitive employer cost-sharing
• Headquarters — Modern, fully equipped offices designed to maximize productivity in a hybrid environment
• Culture — Great Place to Work Certified
• Growth — Paid career development opportunities, audiobook subscriptions, and mentorship
• Future — 401(k) retirement plan plus company matching
• Travel — Company paid domestic trip after your 1-year anniversary & an international trip every 5 years

Location

This is either a fully remote position OR a hybrid position based in Scottsdale, AZ. This role combines the flexibility of remote work with the benefits of meaningful in-person collaboration. Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the Phoenix area.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At GitKraken, we believe that diversity among our teammates is critical to our success as a company. GitKraken evaluates all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender (including pregnancy, gender expression, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability status, or any other legally protected class. We recruit, hire, and retain top talent from a diverse candidate pool.