Software Engineer III (Backend), Automate

What is Box?

Box (NYSE:BOX) is the leader in Intelligent Content Management. Our platform enables organizations to fuel collaboration, manage the entire content lifecycle, secure critical content, and transform business workflows with enterprise AI. We help companies thrive in the new AI-first era of business. Founded in 2005, Box simplifies work for leading global organizations, including JLL, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

By joining Box, you will have the unique opportunity to continue driving our platform forward. Content powers how we work. It's the billions of files and information flowing across teams, departments, and key business processes every single day: contracts, invoices, employee records, financials, product specs, marketing assets, and more. Our mission is to bring intelligence to the world of content management and empower our customers to completely transform workflows across their organizations. With the combination of AI and enterprise content, the opportunity has never been greater to transform how the world works together and at Box you will be on the front lines of this massive shift.

Why Box Needs You

As a Software Engineer III (Backend) on the Automate team, you will be at the heart of Box's workflow automation platform — a product that empowers millions of users to automate complex business processes without writing code. The Automate team is a growing organization of ~30 engineers across four specialized teams, responsible for building the intelligent automation engine that enables organizations to transform how they work.

Box Automate is a keystone in Box's overall AI strategy — one of the primary entry points for AI into Box. The platform drives recurring usage, supports upsell to higher tiers, and increases AI token consumption. Launched recently, Automate is scaling rapidly across both external enterprise customers and internal Box use cases (including Shield, Governance, and Archive).

In this role, you will design and develop sophisticated backend systems at the core of the Box Automate workflow engine. You'll work primarily in Java to build and optimize the engine that represents, executes, and manages complex workflows modeled as graphs. You'll tackle algorithmically rich challenges — from graph traversal and optimization to the design of a meta-language that enables dynamic, variable-driven workflow composition. Your work will directly impact how thousands of enterprises automate their most critical business processes.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement backend services powering the Box Automate workflow engine, writing clean, maintainable Java code with a focus on correctness, performance, and scalability.
• Build and optimize algorithms for workflow graph representation, traversal, and execution, ensuring reliable processing of millions of workflow instances daily.
• Develop and extend the Automate meta-language that enables creation of complex, variable-driven workflows beyond standard CRUD operations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, design, and infrastructure to define requirements, propose technical solutions, and deliver features on schedule.
• Participate in code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and contribute to engineering best practices and architectural decisions.
• Participate in our on-call rotation, available at all times while on-call to help respond to and triage any issues that arise.
• Attend and engage in weekly stand-ups, team meetings, and manager 1:1s to ensure alignment and continuous improvement.

Who You Are

We are an AI-first company. This means you approach your work with a growth mindset and find ways to leverage AI to help make faster, smarter decisions that will 10X your impact at Box.

• You have 3+ years of professional software development experience, with demonstrated expertise in backend development.
• You are proficient in Java and have a deep understanding of object-oriented design principles, data structures, and algorithm design.
• You have strong foundations in computer science — ideally with a background in mathematics or computer science — and are comfortable working with graph algorithms, optimization problems, and complex computational concepts.
• You have experience building scalable backend systems, including database design, caching strategies, and asynchronous processing.
• You are able to assess, communicate, and complete project milestones with your manager and team members in a time-sensitive manner.
• You are fluent in English (written and verbal).

Preferred Skills

• Experience with workflow engines, business process management platforms, or integration frameworks (e.g., Camunda, Flowable, or similar).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and DevOps practices.
• Track record of leading cross-functional projects or mentoring junior engineers.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Contributions to open-source projects or demonstrated passion for software craftsmanship.

Methodology

• Agile management – Scrum
• Issue tracking tool – Jira
• Knowledge repository – GitHub Enterprise
• Code reviews – GitHub Enterprise
• Version control system – Git

BENEFITS
Check out the overview of Life at Box which include general perks and benefits.

Box lives its values, with community and in-person collaboration being a core part of our culture. Boxers are expected to work from their assigned office a minimum of 3 days per week. Your Recruiter will share more about how we work and company culture during the hiring process.

At Box, we believe unique and diverse experiences benefit our culture, our products, our customers, our company, and our world. We aim to recruit a passionate, high-performing workforce that reflects the world we live in. If you are head-over-heels about this role but unsure if you meet all the requirements, we encourage you to apply!

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, and any other protected ground of discrimination under applicable human rights legislation.

For details on how we protect your information when you apply, please see our Personnel Privacy Notice.

For more details on how Box Poland protects your information, please see our Supplemental Personnel and Candidate Privacy Notice.