Senior Software Engineer - Backend

Overview

Build the Future
At McGraw Hill, we deliver digital learning solutions that empower educators and learners worldwide. Our mission is to transform education through intuitive, engaging platforms. Join a collaborative environment where your career can grow as we build solutions that make a meaningful impact

Your role:

As a Senior Backend Software Engineer on the Sharpen team, you will build and evolve the services powering McGraw Hill’s AI-driven learning experiences and digital courseware. You will work across TypeScript and Go microservices, GraphQL and REST APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, AWS, data platforms, and Kubernetes-based infrastructure. This role is for an experienced backend engineer who can lead complex initiatives, influence architecture, and deliver reliable solutions across team boundaries. You will also work within a cross team delivery model to integrate shared services and enable consistent platform capabilities across products.

What You'll Do:

• Design, develop, test, and operate scalable backend services using both TypeScript and Go.
• Own services through their full lifecycle, including architecture, delivery, production readiness, operational health, incident response, and continuous improvement.
• Build and evolve GraphQL and REST APIs, schemas, resolvers, and service contracts with attention to backward compatibility, versioning, schema management, and safe migrations.
• Design and develop distributed systems and independently deployable microservices.
• Build event producers and consumers using queues, topics, workers, and asynchronous processing.
• Develop, deploy, and operate services on Kubernetes and Amazon EKS.
• Work with AWS services such as DynamoDB, Aurora/RDS, S3, SQS, SNS, Secrets Manager, and ECR.
• Design data models, schemas, indexes, migrations, and persistence strategies across relational, NoSQL, and graph databases.
• Partner with multiple engineering teams to plan and deliver shared-service integrations, align technical contracts, and coordinate dependencies.
• Contribute to a cross-team delivery model by communicating implementation details, managing integration risks, and supporting end-to-end delivery.
• Improve reliability through automated testing, observability, tracing, logging, alerting, and performance tuning. Use observability platforms such as New Relic to monitor system health, troubleshoot production issues, and improve service performance.
• Participate in architecture discussions, code reviews, technical planning, and production support.
• Mentor engineers and follow security, compliance, auditability, and change-management practices.

What we Value / What You’ll Need:

• Passion for using technology to improve educational outcomes.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of professional software development experience, including significant experience building and operating production backend services.
• Strong professional experience developing backend services in both TypeScript and Go.
• Strong experience with microservices, distributed systems, and service-oriented architectures.
• Experience designing GraphQL and REST APIs.
• Experience building and operating event producers and consumers, including queues, topics, retries, and failure handling.
• Hands-on experience with AWS and Kubernetes, preferably Amazon EKS.
• Strong understanding of data modeling and databases such as MySQL/Aurora, DynamoDB, Redis, or graph databases. Experience delivering shared-service integrations across multiple teams or products.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, distributed tracing, centralized logging, and platforms such as New Relic. Demonstrated ability to lead complex initiatives, influence architecture, manage dependencies, and mentor engineers. Experience with CI/CD, production operations, automated testing, and performance optimization.
• Experience in a SOX- and/or SOC 2-compliant environment is preferred.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

Bonus Points:

• Experience in EdTech or digital learning platforms.
• Experience with GraphQL federation, gqlgen, Apollo Server, Prisma, sqlc, Gremlin, or Amazon Neptune.
• AWS Certification
• Experience building AI/ML-enabled backend services.
• Familiarity with Terraform, Helm, GitHub Actions, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Sentry, Datadog, or similar observability tools.
• Experience designing high-volume learning, engagement, analytics, or event-processing systems.

Why work for us?

The work you do at McGraw Hill will be work that matters. We are collectively building experiences that will help shape the future of education. Play your part and experience a sense of fulfilment that will inspire you to even greater heights.

The pay range for this position is between $110,000 - $160,000 annually, however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location. An annual bonus plan may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical and/or other benefits, depending on the position offered. Click here to learn more about our benefit offerings.

McGraw Hill recruiters always use a “@mheducation.com” email address and/or from our Applicant Tracking System, iCIMS. Any variation of this email domain should be considered suspicious. Additionally, McGraw Hill recruiters and authorized representatives will never request sensitive information in email. 

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