Senior/Staff Backend Engineer

About Migaku

“What happens when you give a group of hardcore language learners, builders and designers 5 million dollars? That’s Migaku, a new generation of language learning company that shoots for Duolingo’s throne”

– Lucas McCracken, CEO of Migaku

Our CEO is a polyglot. Most of our team has learned 3+ languages. We’re an ambitious group, distilling our experience to build exactly what we know you need to get from 0 to fluency in a language. First, we hand-craft courses, compressing 100,000 study hours into bite-size pieces for early learners. Then, we provide all the tools you need to simply immerse via your favorite content on your preferred platforms, whether it be video streaming, websites, books, and more, to take you all the way to true proficiency. Yes, it occasionally involves flashcards, but even those we make not just painless, but fun: Create them from any content, and Migaku will capture the full context using Migaku’s multimedia and machine learning capabilities. In other words, with Migaku, your only job is to consume media, have fun, and make flashcards, and you’ll reach fluency!

Role Overview

We’re now seeking a senior/staff-level backend developer to join our team. Already at 10k+ users, we are scaling quickly, and looking for a strong engineer to support this growth. They will spend their time split across architectural design and individual contributions. Our challenges are surprisingly fun for a startup, ranging from cross-device data synchronization, large-scale data processing, cross-platform deployments, real-time multimedia processing, fault monitoring and reduction, and general client-server-3rd party system design.

You’ll have designed complex systems in the past and have an incredibly strong sense of ownership. You can develop proofs of concepts FAST and know how to avoid overengineering. You thrive in roles where you have the autonomy to observe, prioritize, and contribute to whatever is needed. Your leadership skills, effective communication, and positive energy will be critical in getting our platform to the robustness level and user experience required to become the world’s go-to language learning platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as senior/staff engineer in a team of ~4 backend engineers, interacting frequently with the broader engineering team

• Develop client- and server-side (Google Cloud) backends for new features, generally in Kotlin or TypeScript

• Design feature and system architectures meeting robustness and scalability requirements

• Integrate with 3rd-party systems, such as LLMs or payment providers

• Mentor backend team members

• Develop proof of concepts as well as implement features end-to-end

• Proactively suggest and carry out system and team improvements

Required skills

• Proficiency in English and strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Role-model individual contributor able to develop end-to-end features quickly

• Strong experience and theoretical understanding of scalable system designs and data structures

• Experience implementing cloud-based services

• Ability to work independently and prioritize your own tasks, balancing importance and urgency and able to quickly switch contexts if needed

• Positive, solution-oriented attitude

• Ability to work in a diverse, full-remote team, generally with 4+ working hours overlap with JST timezone

A big plus if you also have

• Learned (non-native) 1+ spoken language to a high level and/or experience in CJK languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)

• Experience with Google Cloud Platform, Docker, and/or Firebase

• Experience with Kotlin and/or TypeScript

• Experience in mobile development (e.g. iOS or Android native development and/or Kotlin multiplatform)

• Experience working with versioned release processes and/or multi-repo dependency coordination

• Experience with interacting directly with user communities

Why Join Us

• We increased revenue 10x over the past year and plan to do the same again over the coming 12 months, so this is a unique opportunity to experience the early stage of a growing startup

• We will provide you with all the tools and opportunities necessary to make a direct, meaningful and long-lasting impact on the legacy of our company and the global language learning landscape as a whole

• You will be part of a high-trust community that encourages risk-taking, experimentation and innovation

• You will be working alongside ambitious executors and creatives from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines

Perks & Work Culture

Remote Work

Work from anywhere

Flexible Time Off

36 flexible vacation/sick days per year. Work hard, play hard, and take time to recharge when needed.

Flexible Working Hours

No fixed hours. We value results over time clocks. Just be available with sufficient overlap with Japan timezone (4+ hours) for essential meetings and to collaborate smoothly with the team. Expectation of a minimum 40-hour workweek.