Software Engineer (Backend, Infrastructure Focus)

About this role

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.

This 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.

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. We ask that employees work from one of the two locations and come into the office in person 4 days a week (Wednesdays WFH).

What You’ll DoShip impactful, end-to-end features that improve student and teacher experiences

Own scoped initiatives from design through rollout, making real design decisions with increasing independence

Build and scale backend services, APIs, and event-driven systems as our traffic and customer base grow rapidly

Improve engineering foundations, including code quality, observability, testing, and CI/CD

Take part in operational excellence: performance, reliability, security, and incident response

Partner closely with product managers and designers on UX, interaction design, and execution

Use AI coding tools (such as Cursor and Claude Code) as a daily workflow, and review and understand everything they produce

Contribute to design discussions and code reviews, and grow through mentorship from senior engineers

What We’re Looking ForBachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent technical experience

Roughly 3–6 years of professional software engineering experience. We will consider standout candidates outside this range

Strong 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)

Hands-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

Experience designing APIs and event-driven systems (queues, messaging), with a practical approach to scalable architecture

Experience with relational databases (for example MySQL) and operating production systems on cloud infrastructure (ideally AWS)

A track record of owning a multi-week feature or initiative, including design decisions, and a clear, specific story about its impact

AI-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

Familiarity with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and reliable deployment practices

Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain your thinking to technical and non-technical colleagues

A mix of larger-company and startup experience is a plus, along with comfort in a fast-paced, early-stage environment with changing priorities

Hunger to grow, a positive can-do attitude, and impeccable attention to detail

Nice To HaveExperience contributing to frontend codebases (for example React and TypeScript), so you can go full-stack when a feature needs it

Experience shipping LLM-backed features, including handling latency, cost, model failures, and fallbacks.

Experience building or maintaining AI evaluations, including representative datasets, task-specific quality checks, and regression tests for prompt or model changes.

Experience building workflows where models call tools or coordinate multiple steps, including managing state, retries, timeouts, and human review.

Experience at a company that grew quickly during your tenure

What We OfferCompetitive 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

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

401(k) matching

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.