Senior Backend Engineer

About Edia

Our mission at Edia is to ensure every child has an exceptional experience in school. We are a Series A technology startup at the forefront of revolutionizing K-12 education through AI-driven solutions. Our software innovations aim to significantly improve math education, effectively tackle chronic absenteeism, and streamline intervention processes for school districts. Currently, Edia proudly supports over 200 districts nationwide, including major metropolitan areas like New York City, Denver, Fulton County, and San Francisco.

About The Role

We are actively seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our dynamic team and play a crucial role in scaling our Node.js applications hosted on AWS. This particular role deviates from conventional engineering positions; we have fully embraced an AI-assisted development paradigm, anticipating that the majority of code will be generated by AI tools. Your primary responsibility will be to skillfully direct and manage this advanced development process.

You will engage with our comprehensive product suite and internal tools, focusing on building robust systems that serve both educators and students effectively, while simultaneously leveraging AI to automate key business operations.

What You'll Do

• Architect and oversee backend systems across our entire product lineup and internal tooling.
• Guide AI coding assistants to implement large-scale changes and develop new features efficiently.
• Review, debug, and meticulously refine AI-generated code to meet stringent production standards.
• Utilize AI internally to automate and optimize various business operations.
• Ship complete full-stack features from conception to deployment.

What We're Looking For

Essential skills:

• Exceptional proficiency in rapidly reading code, whether human or AI-generated.
• Strong debugging capabilities and an acute eye for identifying bugs.
• Capacity to envision complex architectural changes and effectively decompose them into actionable steps for AI execution.
• Ability to adeptly context switch and manage multiple concurrent tasks.
• Extensive experience with Node.js and robust cloud infrastructure, including AWS, containers, and managed databases.
• Comfortable working across diverse codebases and various problem domains.

What sets you apart:

• You consistently think at a systems-level scale.
• You are highly effective at clearly communicating intent to AI tools and skillfully iterating on their output.
• You possess sound judgment regarding when to accept AI suggestions and when to challenge them.
• You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and can independently take ownership of loosely-defined problems.

Nice to have:

• Frontend experience (React) – you will be reading this code regardless.
• Previous startup experience.

Why This Role Is Different

We are not searching for an individual who desires to write every line of code themselves. Instead, we are looking for someone who can expertly leverage AI to accelerate development significantly beyond traditional methods, all while upholding the exceptional quality and reliability that our school district partners depend on. If you are enthusiastic about contributing at the cutting edge of how software is built, we warmly invite you to connect with us.

Work Authorization: We are currently unable to sponsor or transfer work authorization for all jobs. If circumstances evolve in the future, we will update this section accordingly.

We sincerely appreciate your interest in Edia. Feel free to follow us on LinkedIn to discover more about our initiatives to enhance education outcomes across the US.

Compensation Range: $180K - $250K

Key skills/competency

• Backend Engineering
• Node.js
• AWS
• AI-Assisted Development
• System Architecture
• Debugging
• Code Review
• Containerization
• Managed Databases
• Full-stack Features