Senior Software Engineer (Backend, Infrastructure Focus)

The role

You will own core backend systems and infrastructure that power critical product workflows. You will ship end-to-end features and improve product and engineering foundations.

What you will do

• Ship impactful, end-to-end features that improve student and teacher experiences
• Help set and evolve technical direction, translating business goals into pragmatic technical plans
• Improve product and engineering foundations, including code quality, observability, CI/CD, and developer tooling
• Own operational excellence, addressing performance, scalability, security, reliability, and incident response
• Partner closely with product managers and designers on UX, interaction design, and execution
• Participate across the full lifecycle: prototyping, testing, rollout, and ongoing support
• Provide technical leadership through design discussions, code reviews, and mentorship

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent technical experience
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience or equivalent practical experience
• Strong backend experience (e.g., Kotlin, Python, Go, Rust, Scala)
• Ability to own technical decisions and execute with minimal guidance in ambiguous environments
• Hands-on experience operating production systems and cloud infrastructure (ideally AWS)
• Experience designing APIs, working with relational databases (e.g., MySQL), and shipping complex systems
• 2+ years experience mentoring and/or managing junior and mid-level engineers
• Familiarity with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and reliable deployment practices
• Clear written and verbal communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment with changing priorities
• A positive, can-do attitude
• Impeccable attention to detail

Nice to have

• Extensive experience contributing to frontend codebases (e.g., React, TypeScript)
• Experience with integrating LLM-backed services, including API usage, evaluation, and operational considerations

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity
• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Medical insurance plan with 100% coverage of employee premiums
• Flexible PTO policy and company holidays
• DoorDash credit for lunch daily
• Wellhub Membership: 100% company-paid access to premium gym networks, 60+ wellness apps, and 1:1 coaching sessions
• Dog friendly office

Before you apply

• Kira will make a conditional job offer
• A subsequent criminal, education, and employment history background check will then be issued

About the company

Kira is a rapidly growing startup backed by top-tier Venture Capital funds. Its mission is to harness transformative AI technologies to make world-class teaching and learning accessible to everyone.