Backend Engineer

Position Summary

First and foremost, you are a pragmatic builder of products. You care about solving problems for a large variety of internal users through technology. You find joy in working closely with stakeholders throughout the company to help them achieve their goals. You prefer simplicity and maintainability to complexity in your approach to building software and you prefer done to perfect. We’re working every day to build and refine digital products that delight users and streamline business processes. Our products will help the company to scale effectively with its rapidly growing product lines that will ultimately allow us to put more books into kid’s hands. We see an opportunity to further leverage our tech stack by enabling broader use through AI toolsets. You will be responsible for scoping and delivering key elements of this approach.

Key Responsibilities

Backend Development for AI Enablement

• Implement internal tools and services to allow users to gain more productivity through ai-tooling.
• Architect backend solutions, potentially including data services, MCP servers, and one-off applications to support end-user AI interactions.
• Know where to draw the line between enablement projects and formal software solutions

  Internal solutioning and training

• Work directly with internal stakeholders to understand their problems and processes in order to identify opportunities for acceleration through AI tooling
• Train and guide internal teams on how to effectively adopt and use newly created and available AI tools and workflows
• Evaluate internal feedback to iteratively refine tools, moving beyond simple no-code/vibe-coded solutions to deliver production grade software where appropriate

Security and Quality

• Keep an eye to security, particularly data security as you help the organization to leverage AI
• Conduct application and code reviews, identify potential issues or improvements, and collaborate with stakeholders to address them in a timely manner.

Innovation

• Help the organization form a point of view on where AI fits and socialize strategies for effective AI use
• Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies and processes where appropriate in the AI space
• Help stakeholders understand the relevance and application of various advancements in AI to our specific organization

What Success Looks Like 

• Metrics the business already tracks improve because of something you built or, better yet, helped to enable.
• Error rates, rework, and policy violations on AI-touched work stay flat or go down. You don’t trade quality for speed.
• Named workflows get faster or need fewer people. You can show the before-and-after numbers.
• People keep using what you ship, and customers on the receiving end would say it’s better. If they wouldn’t, it wasn’t a win.

Qualifications

• 3+ year’s experience in implementing backend solutions
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field or equivalent experience
• Proven experience as Backend Engineer
• Experience working with LLMs to solve a broad array of problems
• Solid understanding of relational databases, SQL, and ORM concepts
• Familiarity with frontend technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team environment

Preferred

• Experience with Snowflake
• Experience with deploying applications to AWS with Terraform
• Familiarity with data visualization tools, such as Metabase
• Experience implementing MCP

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Health insurance
• Flexible Spending Account/Health Savings Account
• Supplemental benefits (critical illness, accident, & hospital indemnity)
• Employee assistance program
• Internet stipend
• Company paid life insurance + buy-up option
• Company paid short-term & long-term disability insurance
• 13 paid holidays throughout the year
• Paid Time Off
• Paid Volunteer Time Off
• Work from home
• Cultural connections such as our Quarterly Book Club

Pay

This is a full-time salaried role with a compensation starting at $135,000.

Work Location

This is a work from home position.