Founding Backend Engineer
About The Position
Straia is building an AI-native intelligence layer for colleges and universities. Currently, colleges rely on numerous disconnected systems, leading to significant manual effort for staff in data reconciliation, report compilation, and insight tracking. Straia aims to solve this by unifying institutional data and integrating AI agents that can answer questions, generate insights and visualizations, and automate workflows, thereby transforming college operations. The long-term vision for Straia is to become the central intelligence layer for institutional operations, supporting functions like student advising, admissions, budgeting, and resource planning with AI agents that understand each institution's unique data. The company has secured pre-seed funding from prominent investors and is seeking a founding backend engineer to help construct the technical foundation for how institutions interact with their data.
Requirements
- 3–7 years of experience building and shipping full-stack applications, with a strong emphasis on backend systems (Node.js, TypeScript, Postgres)
- Deeply technical, with a track record of building scalable, high-quality software
- Startup-minded — you thrive in ambiguity, love building from scratch, and see constraints as creative fuel
- Mission-driven — excited to improve education through technology that makes institutions smarter, faster, and more equitable
- Collaborative and high-agency — you take initiative, value clear communication, and have the instincts of an owner, not an employee
Nice To Haves
- AI-curious or experienced — exposure to LLMs, vector databases, or prompt engineering is a plus
Responsibilities
- Build the core platform — architect and implement services spanning data ingestion, query orchestration, and agentic AI workflows
- Ship end-to-end features across our React + Node.js + Postgres stack, integrating directly with LLMs like GPT, Gemini, and Claude
- Scale infrastructure on GCP for performance, reliability, and data security
- Collaborate with users (university data teams and administrators) to translate real problems into elegant, powerful solutions
- Lay the foundation for Straia’s engineering culture, best practices, and technical roadmap
- Prototype fast, iterate faster — your work will directly shape how education leaders experience AI in their daily decision-making
Benefits
- Health (platinum insurance), dental, and vision
- Equity
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Entry Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
