Backend Engineer (EdTech Startup)

Job description
🌐 Remote | Global

⏲️ Flexible schedule (full-time)

🔥 This is a rare opportunity to build AI features and products that will directly improve learning outcomes for millions of students worldwide.

About Darsel

🌍🔢 Darsel is a global education technology nonprofit (501c3) focused on improving math learning outcomes and strengthening cognitive development for primary and secondary school students in low- and middle-income countries.

💻💬 We build accessible AI-powered learning tools, such as WhatsApp chatbots, that help students learn math and provide support to teachers. We partner closely with governments and school systems to scale our solutions and reach the world’s most vulnerable learners.

🎓📈 Darsel has helped 200,000+ students learn math since launching from Harvard and Stanford in 2021, largely as a result of government partnerships in Jordan, India, and Nigeria. We’re on track to meaningfully impact millions of students in the coming years.

🏆💰 We’ve been backed by some of the world’s top accelerators and funders, including Y Combinator, Fast Forward, LSE 100x, Mulago Foundation, and the WISE Prize for Education.

🌐⏲️ Darsel is a global, remote-first organization. We value independence and flexibility, and mostly work asynchronously.

The Role

🔎 Darsel is looking for a backend engineer to accelerate our development efforts and help launch new products, with a strong focus on generative AI applications and data analytics.

💪 This is a high-impact, hands-on role at the intersection of backend engineering, DevOps, and applied data science. You’ll work across multiple critical projects, often simultaneously, with significant ownership over backend systems and infrastructure. You’ll build new features, from prototype to production, that will positively impact millions of students.

🤖 You’ll collaborate with global experts to design and deploy state-of-the-art systems that leverage Generative AI for education, including the production, evaluation, and personalization of math content. You’ll also work on core backend systems such as A/B testing frameworks, analytics pipelines, data visualizations, and user management workflows.

🛠️ We love Python and use it across our stack. Our engineering philosophy prioritizes simplicity, scalability, and serverless architecture, primarily built on AWS and Google Cloud.

About You

🎯 You are mission-driven and deeply motivated by Darsel’s goal to improve learning outcomes for millions of students in low- and middle-income countries.

🧑💻 You have 5+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong proficiency in Python and experience deploying scalable backend infrastructure (databases, APIs, serverless systems), especially on GCP.

🌐 You have a strong interest in generative AI and are excited to build systems that apply innovative technologies to solve real-world problems.

📖 You care deeply about code quality and naturally write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.

🚀 You are highly proactive, self-directed, and thrive in fast-paced, startup-like environments where you take full ownership of your work.

📅 You are strategically organized and detail-oriented, with a proven ability to manage multiple projects and balance competing priorities independently.

🗣️ You are a clear and collaborative communicator, comfortable working across technical and non-technical teams, and able to articulate complex ideas in simple, effective ways.

If you’re excited to take on this challenge, please apply through the following link:

https://airtable.com/appS7o2XlGcxgkJGE/pagqDbQxVv0tUHM4K/form