Job Title: Principal Engineer Lead
Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full-Time
About Us:
Amira Learning accelerates literacy outcomes by delivering the latest reading and neuroscience with AI. As the leader in third-generation edtech, Amira listens to students read out loud, assesses mastery, helps teachers supplement instruction and delivers 1:1 tutoring. Validated by independent university and SEA efficacy research, Amira is the only AI literacy platform proven to achieve gains surpassing 1:1 human tutoring, consistently delivering effect sizes over 0.4.
Rooted in over thirty years of research, Amira is the first, foremost, and only proven Intelligent Assistant for teachers and AI Reading Tutor for students. The platform serves as a school district’s Intelligent Growth Engine, driving instructional coherence by unifying assessment, instruction, and tutoring around the chosen curriculum.
Unlike any other edtech tool, Amira continuously identifies each student’s skill gaps and collaborates with teachers to build lesson plans aligned with district curricula, pulling directly from the district’s high-quality instructional materials. Teachers can finally differentiate instruction with evidence and ease, and students get the 1:1 practice they specifically need, whether they are excelling or working below grade level.
Trusted by more than 2,000 districts and working in partnership with twelve state education agencies, Amira is helping 3.5 million students worldwide become motivated and masterful readers.
Job Summary:
We’re looking for a Principal Engineer Lead to drive the design and development services that power Amira’s AI-based suite of educational products. This is an individual contributor role for an experienced engineer who can take ownership of complex systems and act as a technical lead within a small, high-velocity team. You’ll operate with significant autonomy, move fast, and have outsized impact on the product and the team—owning not just technical output but team delivery, flow, and system-level effectiveness.
You’ll build services and data pipelines that deliver insights to districts, support internal analytics, and drive product experiences, while translating product and business goals into clear technical direction and guiding the team in execution. The work spans backend APIs to distributed data workflows, all within a cloud-native architecture.
This role operates in an AI-first development paradigm. You’ll spend more time on system design, intent specification, and rapid iteration than on line-by-line manual implementation—and you’ll bring the team along on that journey. We’re looking for someone who sees AI-assisted development not as an add-on, but as the primary way modern software gets built, and who can demonstrate what that looks like in practice for a high-performing team.
You’ll wear multiple hats, operate in ambiguity, and make decisions without waiting for permission. The team is small enough that your technical choices directly shape the product experience for millions of students. If you thrive on ownership, speed, and building something that matters—not process and hierarchy—this is the environment for you.
Essential Functions:
Design and build robust, secure, and scalable backend services for reporting, analytics, and data delivery.
Work across Node.js, Python, .NET, and SQL, with data pipelines that support school districts and internal stakeholders.
Operate within a modern AWS environment using services like Lambda, Athena, Glue, DynamoDB, Redshift, and S3.
Participate in reviews, propose architecture improvements, and drive system evolution. Proactively identify technical debt, performance bottlenecks, and high-leverage opportunities—don’t wait to be asked.
Use AI tools (Claude, Cursor, etc.) as primary development instruments—treating prompt crafting, context management, and output validation as core engineering skills, not supplements.
Rapidly prototype and iterate on backend services, APIs, and data pipelines using AI-assisted development—focusing on clear intent, fast feedback loops, and shipping over perfection in early iterations.
Build and refine repeatable workflows where AI handles implementation and the engineer focuses on architecture, review, edge cases, and integration.
Apply strong judgment about when AI-generated code is trustworthy and when deeper review or manual implementation is warranted—especially for data pipelines serving school districts where correctness matters.
Define architectural patterns and guardrails for integrating AI into backend systems, including prompt management, cost controls, and evaluation frameworks.
Lead by example in AI-native development—demonstrating how to move from idea to working system rapidly, how to evaluate AI-generated code critically, and when to go deep manually versus staying at the intent layer.
Coach and mentor engineers in AI-first workflows, helping them shift from “write everything” to “direct, validate, and iterate”—building team comfort and fluency with prompt-driven development.
Establish team norms around AI-assisted work: when to trust AI output, when to inspect closely, how to structure prompts for complex systems work, and how to maintain code quality when generation is fast.
Design and maintain shared AI resources—prompt libraries, Claude Projects, reusable workflows—that raise the floor for the entire team.
Integrate AI into deployment, code review, and testing processes to accelerate team throughput while maintaining quality.
Collaborate with product owners, engineers, data scientists, and customer teams to define and deliver high-impact solutions.
Translate between product, business, and engineering by distilling strategy into actionable technical direction and clearly communicating risks, tradeoffs, and constraints.
Own and continuously improve team delivery flow, including managing WIP, ensuring work reaches a shippable state, and proactively addressing bottlenecks that impact predictability and quality.
Measure and improve team velocity through AI adoption—tracking how AI-assisted workflows change throughput, defect rates, and time-to-ship.
Qualifications (Education and Experience):
Strong background in cloud-based architectures, APIs, and modern software development practices, including CI/CD pipelines and containerized environments.
Deep understanding of AWS services, including but not limited to Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, and CloudFormation.
Demonstrated experience working in an AI-first development style—using LLM-based tools as a primary means of building, not just an occasional assist.
Familiarity with educational technologies, learning platforms, or similar domains is a strong plus.
Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (Claude, Cursor, or similar) in day-to-day development workflows.
Strong judgment about when AI-generated code is production-ready versus when it needs manual refinement—particularly in data-critical contexts.
Experience introducing AI-assisted workflows to a team and shifting development culture toward prompt-driven practices.
Comfort evaluating build-vs-buy decisions for AI capabilities, including managed services (e.g., AWS Bedrock, SageMaker) versus custom implementations.
Passionate about education and improving learning through technology.
A self-starter who takes ownership of outcomes—not just tasks—and thrives on shipping high-impact features, learning from user feedback, and proactively identifying the next problem to solve.
Believes the future of software engineering is about directing systems, not just writing them—and is excited to figure out what that looks like in practice for a small, high-performing team.
Comfortable with startup pace—tight deadlines, shifting priorities, and building elegant solutions with imperfect information. You ship, learn, and iterate.
Strong collaboration skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally with other engineers, architects, and stakeholders outside of R&D such as Customer Success and Support.
Clear and effective communicator who can articulate technical ideas to a diverse audience.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field preferred—but we value demonstrated ability and a strong portfolio over credentials.
Preferred Qualifications:
8+ years of backend development experience, with a strong background in building and maintaining production systems.
Experience working in a startup or early-stage environment where you owned large surface areas with minimal structure.
Skilled in Node.js, Python, and/or .NET and cloud-first application design.
Experience working with relational and NoSQL databases, distributed data pipelines, and large-scale data processing.
Familiarity with PySpark, Glue, or similar frameworks is a plus.
Deep knowledge of AWS or similar cloud platforms, and comfort working in serverless environments.
Track record of identifying high-leverage opportunities to apply AI to real problems—not just internal tooling, but product and data capabilities.
Experience with AI/ML infrastructure concepts: model serving, RAG architectures, evaluation pipelines, or vector databases.
Strong communicator who thrives in a collaborative, fully remote team environment.
Self-directed and able to work autonomously with minimal supervision while maintaining productivity.
Comfortable acting as a technical lead—driving implementation forward, making architecture decisions without escalation, and unblocking peers—while staying hands-on in a fully remote, async-first environment.
Mission-aligned and energized by helping students succeed.
Benefits:
Competitive Salary
Medical, dental, and vision benefits
401(k) with company matching
Flexible time off
Stock option ownership
Cutting-edge work
The opportunity to help children around the world reach their full potential
Commitment to Diversity:
Amira Learning serves a diverse group of students and educators across the United States and internationally. We believe every student should have access to a high-quality education and that it takes a diverse group of people with a wide range of experiences to develop and deliver a product that meets that goal. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.
The posted salary range reflects the minimum and maximum base salary the company reasonably expects to pay for this role. Salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Individual pay is based on location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, marital status, military service, or any other status protected by law.
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