Software Engineer III

Yum! Brands is hiring a Software Engineer III to help build and support scalable software and integration services for Taco Bell’s Customer Middleware platform. In this individual contributor role, you’ll develop, test, deploy, and maintain capabilities that power customer-facing technology across digital ordering, loyalty, customer identity, messaging, and restaurant experiences. You’ll report to the Sr. Manager, Software Engineering and collaborate closely with engineering and partner teams to keep connected systems operating reliably.

What you’ll do

• Build, test, deploy, and maintain cloud-based APIs, event-driven services, integrations, and data-processing workflows supporting customer identity, loyalty, digital ordering, messaging, customer care, and restaurant experiences.
• Translate product and business requirements into technical designs, API contracts, implementation plans, and well-defined engineering stories, coordinating with senior engineers, architects, and partner teams to identify integration dependencies, edge cases, and operational risks.
• Coordinate implementation, testing, defect resolution, and production validation across connected systems, working with software engineers, quality engineers, product leaders, platform teams, vendors, and external delivery teams. Systems may include E-Commerce, Braze, Akamai, and AWS.
• Participate in code and technical design reviews, deliver actionable feedback, and apply engineering standards for reliability, security, maintainability, observability, automated testing, and deployment.
• Investigate complex production and non-production issues using logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and test results; collaborate on remediation for environment-dependent behavior, rate limits, integration failures, and security findings.
• Improve the engineering lifecycle by addressing technical debt, using reusable software patterns, expanding automation, documenting system behavior, and supporting secure, dependable releases via CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code.

What you bring

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience developing and supporting production applications, APIs, distributed services, or integration platforms, with a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering (or equivalent years of experience).
• Hands-on experience with a modern server-side language and ecosystem, preferably TypeScript/JavaScript with Node.js, including automated unit and integration testing, debugging, dependency management, and maintainable development practices.
• Experience building and integrating REST or GraphQL APIs, asynchronous events, queues, and service-to-service integrations, including understanding authentication, error handling, retry behavior, idempotency, and API-contract management.
• Experience building or operating applications on a major cloud platform, preferably AWS, with services such as Lambda, API Gateway, AppSync, S3, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS, and CloudWatch (or comparable offerings).
• Familiarity with delivery and engineering tools and practices including Git, GitLab CI/CD, infrastructure as code (AWS CDK or CloudFormation), Jira, Confluence, API specifications, and observability platforms.
• Proven collaboration across product, QE, platform, security, senior engineers, and partner engineering teams to drive work through discovery, implementation, testing, production deployment, monitoring, and operational support in high-volume transactional environments.

Key technologies

• TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js
• REST, GraphQL
• AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, AppSync, S3, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS, CloudWatch
• Git, GitLab CI/CD, AWS CDK, CloudFormation
• Jira, Confluence
• E-Commerce, Braze, Akamai

Location

Irvine, CA (hybrid)

Compensation

USD 117,800 - 140,000 per year. Salary range includes bonus eligibility and equity (if applicable), plus benefits.

Benefits

• Hybrid work schedule and year-round flex day Friday
• Onsite childcare through Bright Horizons
• Onsite dining center and game room (includes a Taco Bell in the building)
• Onsite dry cleaning, laundry services, and carwash
• Onsite gym with fitness classes and personal trainer sessions
• Up to 4 weeks of vacation per year plus holidays and time off for volunteering
• Tuition reimbursement and education benefits
• Generous parental leave for new parents and adoption assistance program
• 401(k) with 6% matching from Yum! Brands with immediate vesting
• Comprehensive medical & dental, including prescription drug benefits and 100% preventive care
• Discounts, free food, swag