Senior Software Engineer, Backend

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Design, develop, and enhance the systems that facilitate interactions between students and universities.

• Take ownership of essential APIs and services that support real-time data, automation, and integrations.

• Influence product direction during its foundational phase.

• Enhance reliability, performance, and security across distributed systems.

• Automate onboarding processes and workflows by creating ingestion jobs and database-driven configurations.

• Collaborate with product, frontend, and data teams to design and implement impactful features.

• Work closely with Solutions Engineering and Customer Success to ensure smooth school deployments.

• Participate in system design discussions, technical decision-making, and provide mentorship within the team.

• Advocate for best practices in testing, code quality, and CI/CD automation.

• Proactively identify bottlenecks and scale systems to accommodate high-volume data and transactions.

• Stay informed about emerging frameworks, cloud technologies, and AI-driven tools to maintain innovation.

⛳️ Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in backend engineering, preferably in SaaS, EdTech, or high-growth startup settings.

• Proficient in Node.js and adaptable to learn and utilize other modern stacks such as TypeScript/Express or Python/FastAPI.

• Experience in building and scaling RESTful APIs, with GraphQL considered a bonus, while ensuring they remain clean, secure, and efficient.

• Familiar with various databases (Postgres, Redis, or NoSQL) and capable of designing for scale, reliability, and performance.

• Comfortable in cloud-native environments, ideally GCP (with AWS/Azure also acceptable), and proficient in navigating Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform.

• Value automation and pipelines, aiming to reduce manual steps by creating configuration-driven systems, ETL, and ingestion workflows.

• Approach development with a security-first mindset, knowledgeable about OAuth2/OIDC, role- and policy-based authentication, and compliance frameworks such as SOC2 and FERPA.

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and observability tools (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Sentry), recognizing their essential role.

• Enjoy architecting distributed systems and microservices that effectively balance complexity and simplicity.

• Bonus points for experience with AI/ML integration (OpenAI, Hugging Face, vector search like FAISS/pgvector) or a talent for enhancing developer productivity using AI tools.

• Self-motivated individual who excels in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and relishes the challenge of building from 0 to 1.

• A true collaborator who enjoys sharing knowledge, providing feedback, and celebrating team achievements.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity