acemate is building an AI learning & teaching platform for higher and further education institutions. We have strong traction, secured funding and are entering an exciting growth phase. We're looking for a passionate Senior Backend Engineer / Developer to drive our product forward and help us scale.
About acemate
Founded in 2024, acemate has quickly become the leading AI learning platform for higher and further education, trusted by top-tier institutions across four countries, including University of Cologne, WHU and the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (IHKs).
- Our Mission: Democratizing access to personalized learning. We don’t believe that AI will replace educators. Instead, we empower them to design and deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
- Our Growth: We've raised pre-seed funding and are growing rapidly. While we focus on higher and further education in the DACH area today, we're already expanding into new regions and markets.
- Our Culture: We’re a young, driven team passionate about tackling the toughest challenges in education. We embrace builder culture and minimize scheduled meetings for ad-hoc discussions and maximized focus on coding and creating.
Tasks
What You'll Do
Acting as a Backend Engineer and a crucial member of our core team, you will deeply influence our technical roadmap and architectural decisions. You will be given complete end-to-end autonomy over the foundational systems driving our product features, covering everything from the early database schema to API responses and observability dashboards.
- Comprehensive system ownership: You will assume complete accountability for the infrastructure you develop, managing the full lifecycle from early database modeling and API design through to final deployment and continuous monitoring. You will continuously advance our foundational architecture, guaranteeing that our Effect & TypeScript codebase stays highly maintainable, type-safe, and incredibly robust.
- Develop complex logic, extending past basic endpoints: Your main priority will revolve around the essential heavy lifting of our platform. Instead of merely delivering simple CRUD operations, you will architect the sophisticated asynchronous workflows, complex authorization rules, and advanced AI pipelines necessary for resolving challenging user pain points.
Previous examples of projects you might tackle:
- Powerful authorization engine built to manage increasing complexities within various institutional environments via the integration of ABAC and ReBac
- Sophisticated AI pipelines developed to pull visual and textual data from documents utilizing multiple models, subsequently translating those embedded concepts straight into knowledge graphs
- Architectural migration transitioning our core infrastructure away from a fullstack monolith toward a strictly type-safe API layer built with Effect
Tech Stack:
- Backend: Effect.ts, Hono, oRPC, Bun, Typescript
- Database: PostgreSQL (via Supabase)
- Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers, Workflows, R2, KV, Hyperdrive), Google Cloud (Gemini, Cloud Run)
- Tooling: Axiom, Sentry, PostHog, Langfuse, Stripe
- AI: Vercel AI SDK
Please don't be concerned if you don't possess immediate experience with every technology mentioned on your first day. We deeply trust your capacity to rapidly learn and adjust to modern tools and frameworks as our company expands.
Requirements
What We're Looking For
- 2+ years of software engineering experience with strong TypeScript skills
- Startup experience: You’re comfortable in fast-paced, evolving environments
- Balanced AI approach: You knew how to code before Cursor and Claude Code, but understand how to leverage them effectively
- Product passion: High identification with our mission to transform education
- Bonus: Experience with authz systems, infra/devops, AI, or frontend work (Next.js/React)
Benefits
Benefits
- Competitive salary package with equity component
- Fully covered Deutschlandticket
- BusinessBike (bike or e-bike via leasing, also for private use )
- Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
- Flexible environment with high degree of autonomy
- Frequent team events and acemate parties! 🥳