Senior Product Engineer

Just Right Reader is a forward-thinking curriculum provider committed to advancing literacy for students from Birth through 12th Grade. Our comprehensive resources are designed to support all learners, including upper-grade students requiring additional intervention to develop foundational skills. Grounded in the Science of Reading, our high-quality materials and tools equip educators with the support they need to accelerate achievement and foster lifelong readers.

Position Overview:

We are hiring a Senior Engineer to help build and operate the Just Right Reader platform across customer-facing products, internal tools, backend services, and data-driven workflows.

This individual contributor role is ideal for a strong product engineer with meaningful backend depth. You should be comfortable shipping in a modern TypeScript and Next.js environment while also working through API design, SQL-heavy workflows, third-party integrations, and production debugging.

This is not a narrowly scoped frontend role or a pure infrastructure role. It is a hands-on engineering role for someone who can move across the stack and help solve real operational problems in a workflow-heavy product environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain product features across frontend, backend, and database layers.
• Design and implement backend APIs and application workflows for both customer-facing and internal operational use cases.
• Improve internal tools used by operations, customer success, fulfillment, and related teams.
• Work across TypeScript application logic, SQL queries, reporting workflows, and integration code.
• Build and maintain integrations with external systems such as ERP, CRM, auth/identity, and fulfillment-related tools.
• Debug and resolve issues across application code, data, cloud services, and operational workflows.
• Contribute to reliable, maintainable systems that support a growing platform and a small, fast-moving team.

Qualifications:

• Proven experience as a senior (or equivalent) full-stack/product engineer working on production-grade systems
• Deep proficiency in TypeScript
• Demonstrated success building and scaling applications using Next.js
• Solid backend engineering foundation, including API design, server-side logic, and troubleshooting in live environments
• Expertise in PostgreSQL and SQL, with a strong grasp of query optimization and data modeling principles
• Practical judgment in using ORMs, with the ability to leverage raw SQL when appropriate
• Experience integrating third-party APIs and navigating real-world edge cases and failure scenarios
• Familiarity with AWS services such as S3, SQS, Secrets Manager, ECS/Fargate, Lambda workflows, RDS, and DynamoDB
• Willingness to support internal tools and operational workflows as part of end-to-end ownership
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally

Nice to Have

• Experience with Prisma
• Background in building internal tools or operational systems
• Exposure to analytics, reporting features, or data products
• Working knowledge of infrastructure concepts, including Terraform
• Familiarity with platforms such as NetSuite, HubSpot, Shopify, Slack, or similar business systems
• Experience with Python

What Success Looks Like:

The right person will be able to ship product features while also improving the systems behind them. They will be comfortable working through complex workflows, production issues, integration complexity, and data-heavy problems without needing strict boundaries between frontend, backend, and platform concerns.

They will bring strong engineering judgment, a bias toward reliability, and the ability to collaborate closely with teammates across technical, operational, product, and marketing functions.

Why Join Us:

At Just Right Reader, we're transforming how children learn to read. You'll be part of a passionate, growing team committed to educational equity, literacy innovation, and joyful learning.

• Mission-driven company focused on improving literacy and education outcomes.
• Collaborative and innovative work environment with opportunities for growth and development.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.