{"id":4284364,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus","title":"Software Engineer (Backend, Infrastructure Focus)","company":{"id":689795,"name":"Kira Learning","domain":"kira-learning.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/kira-learning","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":165000,"max":195000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":195000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"Elixir","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Haskell","optional":false},{"name":"Kotlin","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Scala","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"MySQL","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-13T19:28:45Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-13","last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T21:20:11Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"As a Software Engineer at Kira, you will build and own backend services that power critical product workflows, and you will grow quickly while doing it. This role is for an engineer who has already seen a system grow fast and wants more ownership: real design decisions, close collaboration with our VP of Engineering, and mentorship from senior engineers.\nThis is a product-minded backend role with meaningful work in performance, reliability, and infrastructure. You’ll partner with product and design to ship complete features, contribute across the stack when needed, and have opportunities to meet directly with teachers and students to learn how they use Kira and where we can improve.\nThis 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. We ask that employees work from one of the two locations and come into the office in person 4 days a week (Wednesdays WFH).\nWhat You’ll Do\nShip impactful, end-to-end features that improve student and teacher experiences\n\nOwn scoped initiatives from design through rollout, making real design decisions with increasing independence\n\nBuild and scale backend services, APIs, and event-driven systems as our traffic and customer base grow rapidly\n\nImprove engineering foundations, including code quality, observability, testing, and CI/CD\n\nTake part in operational excellence: performance, reliability, security, and incident response\n\nPartner closely with product managers and designers on UX, interaction design, and execution\n\nUse AI coding tools (such as Cursor and Claude Code) as a daily workflow, and review and understand everything they produce\n\nContribute to design discussions and code reviews, and grow through mentorship from senior engineers\n\nWhat We’re Looking For\nBachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent technical experience\n\nRoughly 3-6 years of professional software engineering experience. We will consider standout candidates outside this range\n\nStrong backend experience in at least one modern language (for example Kotlin, Python, Go, Rust, Scala, Elixir, or Haskell). Kotlin is a nice-to-have, not a requirement, and we expect you to ramp up on Kira's stack (Kotlin, Python)\n\nHands-on experience scaling a system through real growth, such as taking users or requests from tens or hundreds of thousands to millions, not only operating mature large-company services\n\nExperience designing APIs and event-driven systems (queues, messaging), with a practical approach to scalable architecture\n\nExperience with relational databases (for example MySQL) and operating production systems on cloud infrastructure (ideally AWS)\n\nA track record of owning a multi-week feature or initiative, including design decisions, and a clear, specific story about its impact\n\nAI-enabled development as a real daily workflow (Cursor, Claude Code, or similar), with good judgment about when to use AI and when to solve or review code yourself. You can explain, debug, and fix AI-generated code\n\nFamiliarity with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and reliable deployment practices\n\nClear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain your thinking to technical and non-technical colleagues\n\nA mix of larger-company and startup experience is a plus, along with comfort in a fast-paced, early-stage environment with changing priorities\n\nHunger to grow, a positive can-do attitude, and impeccable attention to detail\n\nNice To Have\nExperience contributing to frontend codebases (for example React and TypeScript), so you can go full-stack when a feature needs it\n\nExperience shipping LLM-backed features, including handling latency, cost, model failures, and fallbacks.\n\nExperience building or maintaining AI evaluations, including representative datasets, task-specific quality checks, and regression tests for prompt or model changes.\n\nExperience building workflows where models call tools or coordinate multiple steps, including managing state, retries, timeouts, and human review.\n\nExperience at a company that grew quickly during your tenure\n\nWhat We Offer\nCompetitive compensation and equity. For applicants in the US, the salary range for this role is $165,000 - $195,000, depending on relevant considerations like professional experience and related skill sets\n\nMedical, dental, vision and life insurance, including a medical insurance plan with 100% coverage of employee premiums\n\nFlexible PTO policy and company holidays\n\nDoorDash credit for lunch daily\n\nWellhub 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\n\n401(k) matching\n\nDog friendly office\n\n Equal Employment Opportunity Employer\nAt 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.\n Background Check\nKira 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5926,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance","Life insurance","Pet friendly"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["EdTech Platforms","Education AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-13T21:20:11Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 1","filings_12m":1,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":162500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-12T07:36:15+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-13T22:07:11Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":195000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T22:07:11Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":44105,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":689795},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=689795"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fkira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fkira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fkira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/kira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fkira-learning-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-focus"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4284364}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"kira-learning.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4284364},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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