Backend Engineer

Level is a learning technology company dedicated to helping students build real academic and life skills with confidence and joy. We combine proven curriculum principles with world class interactive design to make meaningful practice something students want to come back to, not something they struggle through.

We support what teachers, schools, and parents are already doing by increasing student engagement with high quality, standards aligned practice that reinforces classroom learning. That’s why we’re building:

For students: Rewarding and motivating learning experiences that meet students where they are to build real academic proficiency.

For educators: Tools that fit naturally into instruction and help students stay engaged while reducing teacher workload.

For parents: Activities that help your kid catch up or get ahead, build confidence, and minimize homework battles, whether learning at school or at home.

We are committed to helping every person maximize their potential and live a life of meaning. It’s a difficult problem that requires brilliant people and tremendous effort over time.

We're seeking a Backend Engineer to join the team architecting, building and operating the Level platform.

This role requires strong technical ownership and a user-first design approach: you'll own services end-to-end while deeply considering how your technical decisions impact user experiences.

What You'll Do

• Design and develop online platform solutions powering Level products and features including user identity, ecosystem safety, data privacy, publishing & distribution, educational products, social features, game services, telemetry platform etc.

• Build and operate highly available, robust, secure, sustainable, and maintainable components

• Drive service quality through performance analysis, monitoring, alerting, and continuous improvement

• Collaborate with product, design, educators, and engineering teams to translate the vision into technical solutions

• Take ownership of outcomes from initial design through production operations

• Champion and implement best practices in testing, CI/CD, and operational excellence

Technical Stack

• Backend: Kotlin + Spring Boot + gRPC / Connect

• Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), Terraform, ArgoCD

• Data: DynamoDB, Redis, S3, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch

• Messaging: SNS/SQS, Redis PubSub, Kinesis / Kafka

• DevOps: GitHub, OpenTelemetry (+ APMs)

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and operating highly-available online services at scale (100k+ TPS) preferably using Kotlin + Spring Boot + gRPC + Kubernetes

• Ability to quickly understand and translate user needs into technical solution designs

• Proven track record of technical ownership of complex online systems and solutions — designing, building, launching, operating, and improving online solutions end-to-end

• Strong solution architecture and API design skills

• Solid experience with AWS, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code (Terraform, ArgoCD), GitHub Workflows or alike etc.

• Solid understanding of both relational (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (DynamoDB, Redis) databases

• Strong collaboration skills with cross-functional teams

• Excellence in code reviews, technical communication, and documentation

Nice to Have

• Experience in edtech, compliance-heavy industries (COPPA, FERPA), or child-safe technology

• Background in high-scale B2C applications (gaming, streaming, innovative fintech, SaaS)