Senior Backend Engineer

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to lead high-impact with the core backend team and join the founding team of a well-funded EdTech startup. This is a rare opportunity to be part of the zero-to-one stage, shaping both the product and engineering culture from the ground up.

We aim to revolutionize personalized education by aligning with each learner’s journey, from childhood through career, making high-quality, tailored learning accessible and engaging for all.

About the Role

We’re building the foundations of our infrastructure and developer experience from the ground up- with scale, complexity, and AI at the core.

This role sits at the intersection of backend systems, developer productivity, and AI-native development. From day one, the team works with coding agents and LLMs as first-class tools, designing systems that balance deterministic logic with probabilistic AI outputs.

The product focuses on super-personalization, localization, and adaptive user experiences at scale. That creates real technical tension: clean, reliable backend systems alongside ML and LLM-driven behavior with constant research, experimentation, and iteration.

This is a hands-on, foundational role with deep ownership. The decisions made here will shape how the engineering organization builds, ships, and scales over the coming years.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Building core infrastructure and developer experience as a product that others rely on
• Designing systems that operate reliably at scale, even when logic becomes complex and non-trivial
• Defining how AI tools, coding agents, and LLMs are used in development, testing, and deployment
• Navigating trade-offs between deterministic code, ML, and LLM-based solutions
• Leading experimentation around performance, responsiveness, personalization, and localization
• Making architectural decisions early and owning their long-term impact

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python, FastAPI
• Data: PostgreSQL, Valkey (Redis-compatible), Neo4j, BigQuery (analytics)
• Cloud: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• AI/ML: Vertex AI, multi-provider LLM integrations

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering
• Experience in consumer-facing or SaaS products with real, active users
• Background in organizations operating at meaningful scale in traffic, data volume, or system complexity
• A central, high-impact role within an engineering organization.
• Hands-on experience with systems end-to-end designing, building, shipping, and operating production flows

Why Join at This Stage

• Foundational impact: Early architectural decisions that truly matter — no legacy constraints
• Real ownership: A small, senior team where individual decisions shape the product and the engineering culture
• Dev experience designed for AI-first workflows: Infrastructure, tooling, and engineering practices are built from day one to work naturally with coding agents and LLMs.
• Hard problems, real scale: High complexity, ambitious growth, and non-trivial backend challenges
• Room to grow with the system: As the product scales, so does the role — technically and professionally