Staff Software Engineer (Backend)

Job DescriptionJob DescriptionStaff Software Engineer (Backend)About the Client

Our client is a well-funded, growth-stage education technology company building an AI-first learning platform. They blend premium, short-form video instruction with a robust adaptive engine to deliver personalized learning at scale for learners across K-12 and beyond. The team is small but rapidly growing, with deep partnerships across schools and districts and backing from top-tier investors.

About the Role

They’re hiring a Staff-level Backend Engineer to architect and scale the core services that power individualized learning experiences for millions of students. You’ll lead the design of data-intensive, AI-driven systems, set technical direction across services, and collaborate closely with educators and researchers to translate pedagogy into production software.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve adaptive learning backends that process massive streams of learner interactions and respond in real time.

• Build orchestration layers for LLM/ML workloads that deliver safe, reliable personalization at scale.

• Develop intelligent content and feedback services that time the right hint, explanation, or challenge to each learner.

• Establish privacy, safety, and governance controls that protect student data while enabling responsible AI.

• Create real-time assessment services and knowledge graph components that capture conceptual understanding, not just right/wrong.

• Architect multi-modal pipelines supporting visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning experiences.

• Drive reliability and performance across distributed systems (low-latency APIs, event-driven pipelines, and high-availability services).

• Optimize for cost and efficiency; design for constrained networks and offline-first scenarios to broaden access.

• Partner with teachers, students, and learning scientists to ensure solutions work in real classrooms.

• Raise the engineering bar through mentorship, code reviews, and pragmatic technical leadership; contribute to open source where it helps the ecosystem.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend engineering, including 3+ years at Staff/Principal scope leading complex, distributed platforms.

• Deep expertise with Node.js in production; comfortable pushing the runtime’s limits when appropriate.

• Polyglot architecture experience (e.g., Go, Rust, Elixir/Erlang, or modern Java) and sound judgment on when to use each.

• Strong PostgreSQL fundamentals: schema design, query tuning, and scaling strategies for high-write, high-read workloads.

• Hands-on experience shipping ML/LLM features to production, with clear understanding of their strengths and limits.

• Proven track record building systems for millions of concurrent users and real-time requirements.

• Cloud- development at scale (GCP experience a plus): microservices, containers, event buses, and observability.

• Mindset: mission-first, data-driven, collaborative, and committed to responsible AI that augments (not replaces) teachers.

Work location: Primarily on-site in one of two U.S. hubs (Central and West Coast). Relocation support available.
Work authorization: Unable to sponsor visas at this time.

Benefits & Why Join

• Mission & Impact: Your work will shape how a learns—bringing high-quality, personalized education to learners at massive scale.

• Technical Challenge: Tackle hard problems at the intersection of AI, distributed systems, and learning science.

• Strong Platform & Data: Rich education datasets, direct school partnerships, and the autonomy to build the right solutions.

• Team: Builders from diverse backgrounds—former founders, seasoned platform engineers, educators, and pragmatic AI practitioners.

• Compensation: Highly competitive base (typically high-$200s to mid-$300s) plus meaningful equity, with comprehensive health benefits, team meals, wellness support, and relocation assistance.

• Growth: Clear ownership, mentorship opportunities, and a culture that celebrates bold attempts and fast, thoughtful iteration.