Senior Python Engineer

DeweyLearn; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

DeweyLearn is an education technology startup in the United States building AI-driven assessment tools. We are looking for engineers to build and maintain production backend services and APIs in Python using FastAPI, and to implement retrieval workflows with RAG and embeddings.

You will work closely with other engineers and stakeholders to make sound technical trade-offs, keep systems clean and reliable, and help shape the future of education in a dynamic early-stage environment.

Qualifications

• 4–8 years of professional software engineering experience, learned fundamentals the hard way.
• Experience working with ML/AI systems in production.
• Excellent communication and ability to explain trade-offs to stakeholders.
• Legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship and located in the US.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain production backend services and APIs in Python (FastAPI).
• Implement retrieval workflows (RAG, embeddings, vector search).
• Collaborate with engineers and stakeholders to make technical trade-offs.
• Help keep systems clean, reliable, and easy to extend.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

English proficiency

Software engineering fundamentals

Team collaboration

Tools

PostgreSQL

Docker

CI/CD

Infra as Code

RAG

Embeddings

NLP

Frontend framework

Job description

We are DeweyLearn, an education technology startup building AI systems that capture expert judgment and turn it into authentic assessment. We're small and early, and the work is real from day one.

In your cover letter, tell us about a time an AI coding tool produced something that looked correct but wasn't — how you caught it, and what you changed afterward.

Tasks

• Build and maintain production backend services and APIs in Python (FastAPI)
• Implement retrieval workflows (RAG, embeddings, vector search)
• Work closely with other engineers and stakeholders to make good technical trade-offs
• Help keep our systems clean, reliable, and easy to extend

Requirements

General:

• You’re a curious technologist at heart. You like understanding how things work, and you enjoy exploring new tools, approaches, and ideas
• You are a fast self-learner and enjoy dialog
• You have proven software engineering fundamentals and can build reliable systems that others can understand, maintain, and extend
• You are a good communicator and can ask the right questions, explain trade-offs in a straightforward way, and collaborate with stakeholders
• You enjoy collaborating with other team members
• 4–8 years of professional software engineering experience. This is a deliberate band, not a minimum — we want engineers who learned the fundamentals the hard way and then rebuilt how they work around AI
• You have experience working with ML/AI systems in a production environment.
• You have native/fluent proficiency in English
• Experience in early-stage startups is a plus
• You work agentically. AI is your primary authoring tool, not an autocomplete you tolerate, and you can say precisely where you let a model run unsupervised and where you don't
• You read AI output critically. You've caught it being confidently wrong, and you still know what's underneath — when an agent writes something that breaks, you can debug it
• You must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship, now and in the future, and be physically located in the US while working. Eastern time zone strongly preferred — we need at least six hours of daily overlap with 9:00–17:00 ET

Technical:

• Exceptional command of the Python language is a must
• Exceptional command of FastAPI and related topics is a must
• Production API work backed by PostgreSQL is a must
• Good command of Docker in dev and deployment use cases
• Understanding of Infra as code is a plus
• Exceptional understanding of “engineering basics” (version control, CI/CD, environments, debugging)
• Familiarity with retrieval workflows (RAG) and embedding-based search
• Experience with Natural Language Processing is a plus
• Familiarity with at least one front-end framework is a plus
• Collaborative, innovation-focused environment
• Opportunity to shape the future of education

Join us in building the future of education technology. If you're passionate about creating innovative solutions and want to be part of something groundbreaking, we want to hear from you.