Senior Backend Engineer (LATAM)

Workera; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company is seeking a Sr. Software Engineer to join their user engagement team. This role involves working with Elixir and collaborating with a world-class team to shape the future of upskilling using Generative AI. The ideal candidate thrives in fast-paced environments and has a strong background in software development, particularly in building scalable systems. You'll work closely with product managers and designers, contributing to meaningful projects and driving new initiatives.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software development, ideally in SaaS.
• Strong experience building scalable systems end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Work on backend in Elixir and make changes across the full stack.
• Lead projects involving technical and product ambiguity.

Skills

Software Development

Communication

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Tools

PostgreSQL

GitHub

Slack

Job description

We’re looking for a highly skilled and experienced Sr. Software Engineer to join our user engagement team. If you're excited about shaping the future of upskilling — by harnessing the power of Generative AI, working with Elixir, and collaborating with a world-class team — this could be your next great adventure.

At Workera, we believe every developer should be a product engineer , someone who cares deeply about the product, the business, and the people using it.

To support that, we work in small project teams (2–3 people), using the ShapeUp methodology. Each team dives deep for six weeks to solve a focused business problem. Teams have the autonomy to choose how they tackle challenges—and the responsibility to own the full lifecycle of their solution: scoping, building, testing, rollout, and incorporating user feedback. You’ll partner closely with a product manager, product designer, and colleagues across the business.

On the technical side, you’ll work mostly on the backend in Elixir, but you will have to be comfortable making changes across the full stack, including on the frontend. You'll write clean, modular, testable code.

You’ll also have the chance to collaborate with peers from diverse backgrounds, in a feedback-rich environment that fosters continuous learning and growth.

About the team

You’ll be joining a tight-knit team of five engineers, supported by a product designer, a product manager, and an engineering manager—all located across the US and LATAM region.

Our shared mission is to build a best-in-class workforce upskilling experience that empowers users to achieve their professional goals and grow in their careers.

We strongly value deep work and asynchronous communication. To support focus time, we keep meetings to a minimum. We are happy to share more about the team’s product focus areas as we get to know each other better.

When you join, here’s what you’ll do

We want every new engineer to start strong and feel confident about their long-term growth at Workera.

In your first 30 days, you’ll get oriented by:

• Learning about our product and the people behind it—from engineers to folks in other departments
• Getting familiar with our development process (feature development, code reviews, delivery), setting up your environment, and tackling a few small fixes across the platform
• Upskilling on the technologies we use (especially AI-related tools), if needed

Within 60 days, you’ll be fully embedded in our development workflow by:

• Contributing meaningfully to your first project
• Gaining a strong understanding of our market, users, and strategy
• Communicating clearly and consistently in team discussions during the build cycle

By 90 days, you’ll be operating as a fully independent contributor, able to:

• Lead projects that involve both technical and product ambiguity
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across the stack, from backend to frontend
• Help shape and drive new initiatives—whether that's a new feature or technical improvement

From there, the direction is yours to shape. Some engineers lean into developer experience, others into infrastructure, product enhancements, cross-team efforts, knowledge sharing, or introducing new technologies. Wherever your passion lies, there’s room to explore and lead.

We hope you have

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in fast-moving, high-impact environments and enjoy taking initiative. You know how to navigate ambiguity, set priorities, and move projects forward even when there’s a lot on your plate.

You’ve built scalable software systems and have a knack for balancing short-term pragmatism with long-term technical vision. If functional programming is new to you, that’s okay—we’re here to support your growth.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of experience in software development, ideally within a SaaS or startup environment.
• Strong experience building scalable systems end-to-end. While Elixir/Phoenix is our core stack, experience with similar technologies like Go, Erlang, or Clojure is welcome. If you haven’t worked with Elixir before, we value a proven ability to learn new technologies quickly.
• Experience with or strong interest in GenAI and LLM technologies and the ability to learn and apply these technologies quickly.
• Interest in frontend development skills — experience with Phoenix LiveView is a plus, but familiarity with JS/TS frameworks like React, Svelte, or Vue.js is also relevant. We are working toward having all engineers become full-stack developers.
• Comfort working with PostgreSQL and understanding of relational data modeling.
• Proficiency with GitHub and Slack for collaboration.
• 2+ years working in a fully remote environment and able to work autonomously while keeping stakeholders informed.
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and verbal.

The details: remote work & tech stack

This is a Level 3 (Senior) role, open to candidates based inArgentina, Brazil, or Colombia. You’ll have flexibility to choose your working hours, as long as there’s at least a three-hour overlap with your teammates.

Our core tech stack includes Elixir and PostgreSQL on the backend, and Phoenix LiveView on the frontend—with some pockets of React. We use RabbitMQ for messaging, and everything runs in Docker containers on AWS, provisioned via Terraform.

Our platform is primarily built on OpenAI, with multi-modal capabilities and fallbacks to other leading foundation model providers. We focus heavily on building custom LLM tooling, supported by a robust infrastructure for LLM tracing, logging, and observability. We also implement in-house RAG capabilities, including chunking, vector stores, and retrieval. Our engineering team — and broader workforce — is deeply knowledgeable in AI. Our CEO, who teaches Deep Learning as an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford, brings academic depth to our AI-first culture.

We collaborate primarily through GitHub and Slack (we keep email to a minimum). We follow the ShapeUp methodology for product development and use Shortcut for ticket tracking. We’re happy to walk you through our tech radar when we chat, to give you a fuller picture of our ecosystem.

You’ll be hired via an Employer of Record. The People team can fill you in on the details when the time comes.

About Workera

Workera is a fast-growing, Series B Silicon Valley start-up redefining how enterprises understand, develop, and mobilize talent. Workera’s skills intelligence platform empowers leaders to make better, more informed talent development decisions. Utilizing computational psychometrics, machine learning, and AI technologies, Workera delivers best-in-class computer adaptive assessments with hyper-personalized learning plans to global companies across all industries. Our clients include Samsung, Siemens Energy, and the US Air Force.

Our founder is Kian Katanforoosh, an award-winning Stanford Computer Science Lecturer who has taught AI to over 1 million people, and our Chairman is Dr. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera (NYSE: COUR), CEO of DeepLearning.AI , and founding lead of the Google Brain project.

We’re learners, dreamers, and game-changers. Join us.

At Workera, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Workera believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees are critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the best and most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

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