[Hiring] Junior Software Engineer, Full-Stack @Epic Kids

Role Description

The Junior Software Engineer, Full-Stack is an entry-level role designed for recent graduates beginning their professional engineering careers. You will write code across our web stack—front-end in Angular/TypeScript, back-end in PHP and Go—on well-scoped tasks under the close guidance of senior engineers. The first year is about learning: our codebase, our review and release process, how features move from idea to production, and the fundamentals of writing software that other engineers can trust. This is a fully remote, US-based role working closely with a global, bilingual (English–Chinese) engineering team.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement well-scoped front-end features and UI changes in Angular (TypeScript, SCSS) under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Implement well-scoped back-end endpoints and changes against MySQL, working in PHP (Symfony + Doctrine ORM) on existing application code and in Go on newer services as the team's Go footprint expands.
• Investigate and fix bugs across the stack—reproduce the issue, identify the cause with help when needed, and ship the fix.
• Write unit tests for the code you ship and keep tests passing on the areas you touch.
• Participate in code reviews as both author and reviewer.
• Work with designers, product managers, and senior engineers to translate small user-facing requirements into shipped changes.
• Maintain documentation—READMEs, code comments, and onboarding notes—for the areas you work in.
• Use AI-assisted development tools to support learning and productivity, ensuring you understand and can defend every line of code you commit.
• Take on progressively larger and more independent scopes of work as you ramp on the codebase, supported by pairing and code walkthroughs with senior engineers.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree (recently completed or completing within the next 6 months) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a closely related field—or equivalent practical preparation (e.g., bootcamp + substantial portfolio).
• Solid grasp of programming fundamentals: data structures, control flow, basic algorithms, object-oriented programming.
• Hands-on coding experience in at least one modern programming language through coursework, personal projects, internships, or open-source contributions.
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (or TypeScript) at a level sufficient to build simple interactive web pages.
• Familiarity with Git and pull-request-based workflows.
• Basic familiarity with relational databases and SQL (SELECT, JOIN, simple WHERE clauses).
• Eagerness to learn, openness to feedback, and willingness to ask questions rather than guess.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English for daily collaboration and technical documentation.

Preferred Skills

• Coursework, internship, or side-project exposure to a modern component-based front-end framework (Angular, React, or Vue) and reactive patterns (RxJS, hooks, or similar).
• Coursework, internship, or side-project exposure to a server-side language (PHP or Go especially welcomed; Java, Python, or Node.js also fine).
• Exposure to an ORM (Doctrine, Hibernate, Eloquent, Prisma, TypeORM, or similar).
• Exposure to unit-testing frameworks (Jasmine/Karma, Jest, PHPUnit, Go's testing package, JUnit, pytest, etc.).
• Exposure to Docker or containerized local development.
• Exposure to any cloud platform (GCP preferred; AWS or Azure also welcomed).
• Internship experience at a software company.
• Open-source contributions, hackathon projects, capstone work, or other evidence of engineering curiosity outside of coursework.
• Working proficiency in Mandarin Chinese to collaborate with global engineering and business partners.
• Interest in ed-tech, children's media, or content-platform work.