Senior Software Engineer

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Pear Deck Learning team. Pear Deck Learning is our all-in-one platform that supports every instructional step in any topic: Pear Start for planning and delivering high-quality lesson packages, Pear Deck for increasing student participation through tailor-made presentations and real-time feedback, Pear Practice for differentiated, gamified practice with standards-aligned content, and Pear Assessment for versatile assessments and crystal-clear reports. You'll contribute across the full stack of this suite, which serves hundreds of thousands of teachers and students in real time. This position is based in India and works closely with US-based product and engineering teams, so strong written communication and comfort operating with partial time-zone overlap are essential.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and continuously improve features across the Pear Deck Learning suite, from the presenter and student experiences to the platform services behind them.
• Develop high-performance backend services in Node.js (Express) and Go (gRPC microservices) that power real-time classroom workflows -- live sessions, joining by code, presence, leaderboards, and streaming responses.
• Build data-rich, accessible frontend experiences with React 18 and TypeScript, using component systems like Chakra UI, state tooling like Redux Toolkit and React Query, and form/validation patterns built on react-hook-form and Zod.
• Design REST and gRPC APIs (grpc-gateway, OpenAPI/Swagger) for real-time data and service-to-service communication in a service-oriented architecture.
• Work across a polyglot data layer -- MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB for records; Redis and Redis Cluster for caching and fan-out; Elasticsearch for search; Kafka, SQS/SNS, and Pub/Sub for events -- and optimize schemas and queries as usage scales.
• Build and operate real-time infrastructure: WebSockets, server-sent events, and Firebase Realtime Database-backed live sessions.
• Integrate LLM/AI services (OpenAI, Google Gemini) into product features -- content generation, streaming responses, retrieval-augmented context, and the moderation and quota guardrails K-12 requires.
• Contribute to integrations that meet teachers where they work: Google Slides, Classroom, and Drive; Microsoft Teams and Office add-ins; LTI; and SIS rostering (OneRoster, Clever).
• Write maintainable, well-tested code with strong typing; contribute to test suites in Vitest, Jest, and Go's testing stack, and uphold CI quality gates.
• Help modernize legacy surfaces -- migrating older React/build tooling to current standards (React 18, Vite, TypeScript 5) without disrupting classrooms that depend on them daily.
• Ship and operate services on AWS (ECS, Aurora, S3, SQS, CloudFront) and GCP (GKE/Kubernetes, Cloud Build, Firebase), using Docker, Terraform, and Helm.
• Monitor and improve performance and reliability with Datadog, OpenTelemetry, and Prometheus/Grafana; participate in an on-call rotation for production support.
• Mentor other engineers and actively participate in architecture discussions and code review.

Who You Are

• 5+ years of experience as a software engineer on SaaS or customer-facing products, including leading delivery of complex, large-scale features.
• Strong TypeScript and modern React (hooks, React 18, Vite or similar tooling), with an eye for performant, accessible UI.
• Production experience with Node.js and/or Go on the backend -- including concurrency, service-to-service communication, and asynchronous/background processing -- and willingness to work in both.
• Experience designing APIs (REST and/or gRPC) for high-throughput systems, including versioning, validation, and documentation.
• Solid SQL proficiency (MySQL or PostgreSQL) with schema design and query optimization experience; familiarity with document stores like MongoDB.
• Familiarity with caching strategies (Redis/Redis Cluster) and event/queue systems (Kafka, SQS/SNS, or Pub/Sub).
• Experience building or operating real-time features (WebSockets, SSE, or Firebase-style realtime databases) at meaningful scale.
• Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure -- AWS and/or GCP -- plus Docker and an orchestration platform (ECS or Kubernetes); comfort with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or Helm).
• A habit of writing tested code (Vitest, Jest, React Testing Library, or Go testing/testify) and improving test coverage where it's thin.
• Comfort navigating large existing codebases -- including legacy code mid-migration -- and complex local dev environments (Docker Compose, monorepos, generated code).
• Strong written communication and proactive collaboration habits suited to a distributed team with US time-zone overlap.
• Track record of delivering performant, scalable features, advocating for engineering quality, and mentoring teammates.
• A genuine interest in impacting the world of education.

Nice to Have

• Experience integrating LLM APIs (OpenAI, Gemini) into production features, including prompt design, streaming, moderation, and cost/quota controls.
• Experience with Elasticsearch or other search/indexing systems.
• EdTech domain exposure: LTI, Google Classroom, OneRoster/Clever rostering, or student data privacy practices.
• Browser extension, Google Apps Script/Workspace add-on, or Office add-in development.
• Canvas/animation work (Konva, Spine, Rive, Lottie) or rich-text editing (Slate, MDX).
• Accessibility (WCAG, axe-core) and internationalization (i18next) experience.
• Observability depth: OpenTelemetry instrumentation, Prometheus metrics, or Datadog dashboards.