Senior Software Engineer (Backend, Infrastructure Focus)

Kira is a rapidly growing startup backed by top-tier Venture Capital funds including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Andrew Ng’s AI Fund, and Primavera. We live in a world where technology is rapidly changing the educational experiences of students and teachers everywhere, and we have the opportunity to shape how this change takes place. It is Kira Learning’s mission to harness transformative AI technologies to make world-class teaching and learning accessible to everyone.

As a Senior Software Engineer at Kira, you will own core backend systems and infrastructure that power critical product workflows. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building reliable, scalable services, improving infrastructure and developer tooling. While this is a backend-leaning role, the ideal candidate is comfortable going full-stack when needed, partnering closely with product teams to ship end-to-end features.

This is a full-time position that requires flexibility with work hours and availability outside of regular business hours. We have offices in San Francisco, CA and New York City, NY and we ask that employees work from one of the two locations and come into the office in-person 4 days a week.

Core Responsibilities

• 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

Ideal Background

• 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), with willingness to ramp up on Kira’s stack (Kotlin, Python)

• 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, fostering a culture of continuous learning and high-quality delivery

• 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. You’re not deterred by minor setbacks and are able to swiftly overcome ambiguity

• Impeccable attention to detail

• (Preferred) Extensive experience contributing to frontend codebases (e.g., React, TypeScript)

• (Preferred) Experience with integrating LLM-backed services, including API usage, evaluation, and operational considerations

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity. For applicants in the US, the salary range for this role is $180,000 - $250,000+, depending on relevant considerations like professional experience and related skill sets

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance, including a 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 (Orangetheory, SoulCycle), 60+ wellness apps (Headspace, MyFitnessPal, Apple Fitness+), and 1:1 coaching sessions spanning fitness, mental health, nutrition, and sleep.

• Dog friendly office 🐶.

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

At Kira, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Kira believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees are critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Background Check

Kira will make a conditional job offer in line with local, state and federal laws, and a subsequent criminal, education, and employment history background check will then be issued.