Senior Software Engineer, Product

Senior Software Engineer, Product
Air Reading | Product & Engineering

Location: Remote within the United States. 

Air Reading helps students become confident readers through live, small-group online instruction. Our software supports the full learning experience: students joining class, teachers delivering lessons, schools tracking progress, and teams coordinating the work behind each session.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Product who pairs deep, hands-on backend expertise with sound product judgment and a genuine interest in how children learn and how teachers work. In this role, you will identify the problems most worth solving, articulate your reasoning, align with product partners, and own solutions from design through measurable results.

Why this role

This role is central to Air Reading’s ability to deliver high-quality instruction as we grow. You will work with a globally distributed product and engineering team on problems that shape every class, from student placement and dependable teacher tools to clear progress reporting for schools. You will build and operate production software while helping shape product direction, working closely with product, design, teachers, and school teams to identify problems, develop solutions, and learn from the results.

What you’ll do

• Map student, teacher, and administrator workflows with product and design, and translate the problems you uncover into well-scoped engineering work.
• Design, build, and operate backend services, APIs, and data models that power student placement, scheduling, teacher tools, and school reporting, and deliver the corresponding interface work.
• Engage directly with teachers, operations staff, and other users. Use their feedback and product data to define problems, set priorities, and validate solutions.
• Make deliberate tradeoffs among speed, usability, reliability, and maintainability, particularly when a class is about to begin or student information is involved.
• Measure whether shipped work improves the classroom experience, supports student learning, or saves time for teachers and staff, and refine it based on the results.
• Use production data, logs, and alerts to diagnose issues, strengthen reliability, and understand how features perform after release.
• Contribute to a small engineering team through code review, clear technical decision-making, and support for teammates during production issues.

What you bring

• 5 + years of experience owning, building and operating production web applications.
• Bachelor of Science in Engineering, or a related technical field or related certification. 
• Substantial hands-on experience designing, building, and operating production backend systems, including API and service design, relational data modeling, business logic, authorization, failure handling, performance optimization, and production debugging.
• A proven record of identifying meaningful problems through user conversations, product data, or operational insight, then leading the solution end to end and demonstrating its impact, whether through adoption, time saved, improved reliability, or better learning outcomes.
• Strong product partnership skills: the ability to clarify problems, propose and constructively challenge approaches, reduce scope when appropriate, and adjust course when the evidence warrants it.
• Clear, thoughtful communication about priorities, alternatives, and tradeoffs with colleagues across engineering, product, and design.
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript. Our server runs on Node.js, Express, Prisma, and PostgreSQL, and our client is built with React. Experience with comparable technologies is welcome; we value depth of understanding over an exact stack match.
• Experience owning software in production, including its reliability. Our infrastructure runs on AWS (ECS Fargate, Aurora PostgreSQL, S3, CloudFront), with Datadog and Sentry for observability and LaunchDarkly for feature releases. Familiarity with every tool is not required.
• Careful attention to accessibility, privacy, and reliability in software used by children and schools.
• A specific, informed interest in education and a willingness to learn from students, teachers, coaches, school leaders, and operations staff.
• A track record of growing into broader ownership over time, along with a commitment to mentoring and helping other engineers grow while remaining close to the code.
• Typically 5 or more years of professional experience. We place greater weight on the scope and impact of your work than on years alone. A computer science degree is welcome, but equivalent experience and demonstrated engineering ability are equally valued.

How we work

Air Reading’s values start with Student First. We act with care for students, teachers, and teammates; work openly as one team; use evidence to guide decisions; and keep learning and improving. We value people who take initiative, own their mistakes, and celebrate progress together.