Sr. Software Engineer

About Blackhawk Network

Today, through BHN’s single global platform, businesses of all kinds can tap into the world’s largest network of branded payment solutions. BHN helps businesses grow revenue, increase loyalty, motivate and reward their teams, disburse funds and engage consumers. Branded payment solutions include the issuance and distribution of gift cards, egifts, corporate payouts and rewards, along with the technology to deliver these products in seamless, integrated ways. BHN’s network spans the globe with more than 400,000 consumer touchpoints. Learn more at BHN.com.

Overview

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Core Systems team at Blackhawk Network.

This team is responsible for improving production reliability, observability, security posture, upgrade readiness, and operational excellence across multiple backend platforms. The team works across application boundaries to modernize systems, reduce operational toil, enable Push-On-Green, strengthen telemetry, and improve the engineering maturity of core services.

This is a hands-on engineering role, not a support role. It is ideal for someone who enjoys working on real production systems, solving cross-system problems, and using AI tools to accelerate engineering work.

The role combines strong backend engineering with an AI-first approach to productivity, debugging, automation, and modernization.

Responsibilities

What You’ll Do

1. AI-Augmented Engineering & Automation

Extensively use AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, LLM assistants, internal AI tools) to improve productivity across:

• debugging and issue diagnosis
• code refactoring and upgrades
• automation development
• log and trace analysis
• documentation and runbook creation

Identify repetitive operational work and automate it at scale

Rapidly prototype practical solutions that improve engineering efficiency and reduce toil

2. Observability & Telemetry

3. Upgrades, Modernization & Platform Hygiene

4. Security, Compliance & Vulnerability Remediation

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For

Required

• 4+ year of strong experience building and maintaining backend systems using Java and Spring Boot
• Solid experience working with production systems, incident resolution, and operational troubleshooting
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals such as retries, timeouts, idempotency, resiliency, and monitoring
• Hands-on experience with observability and telemetry tools, especially:
• New Relic (APM, metrics, traces)
• Splunk (log analysis and troubleshooting)
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to:
• application/framework upgrades
• dependency modernization
• production reliability improvements
• vulnerability remediation
• Strong debugging, problem-solving, and cross-team collaboration skills
• Comfort using AI tools as part of day-to-day engineering work

Nice to Have

• Experience with OpenTelemetry
• Exposure to AWS cloud environments
• Experience with CI/CD, release automation, and deployment safety mechanisms
• Familiarity with PCI or other regulated environments
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or acting as a technical lead on cross-cutting work
• Exposure to automation frameworks, quality engineering, or platform engineering practices

We seek candidates who not only demonstrate curiosity and adaptability in emerging technologies but have also successfully implemented and utilized AI tools to enhance their work, improve processes, or deliver measurable results. Our teams embrace continuous learning and the thoughtful integration of AI to create meaningful impact – for our employees and the future of work.

Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check.