[Hiring] Senior Backend Engineer @Element451

Role Description

Element451 is building the AI-powered platform reshaping how colleges and universities recruit, enroll, and support their students — and the backend is the engine that makes it work. You’ll build the services, data models, and integrations that move millions of student interactions through a multi-tenant, async-first platform, with AI woven into the product itself. It’s a rare chance to own meaningful systems end to end, treat AI as a real craft rather than a buzzword, and help shape how a high-performing team builds software in the AI era.

The Role:

• Build high-quality backend software with full end-to-end ownership — from shaping a feature in planning through keeping it stable in production.
• This is an explicitly AI-forward role: AI tooling is a professional discipline here, applied thoughtfully across every phase of the work.
• Operate with a lot of autonomy, hold work to a high standard, and lift the quality of the work happening around you.
• Expectations are clear, and the environment is supportive for engineers who thrive on ownership.

What You’ll Own

• Own the services you ship — their correctness, stability, security, and maintainability.
• Designing and building backend services in PHP/Laravel with clear domain boundaries and well-structured code.
• Own the data layer: MongoDB schema and index design, query performance, and safe migrations.
• Build async, event-driven work with SQS-based queues, jobs, and retries designed for idempotency.
• Own the API contracts you publish, including schema evolution and backward compatibility.
• Design for secure tenant isolation, authorization boundaries, and sensitive-data handling.
• Implement and operate third-party integrations (Twilio, Stripe, PayPal, Google, Outlook, SIS/CRM systems).
• Maintain performance and cost at scale — query patterns, N+1s, and tenant-level behavior.
• Back your work with tests: unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end coverage.
• Ship safely behind feature flags and monitor services in production.
• Lead technical design, communicate architectural trade-offs, and mentor other engineers at the Senior level.
• Use AI development tools thoughtfully and hold AI-assisted work to the same standards as hand-written code.

How You’ll Show Up

• Understand the “why” before the “what.”
• Own the outcome — take responsibility for the result from design to production.
• Take initiative — move work forward proactively and unblock progress.
• Solve problems together — engage collaboratively and treat feedback as professional input.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering, with significant time at or near Senior level in a complex, multi-tenant SaaS product.
• Deep expertise in PHP and Laravel — service and domain design, async and queue primitives.
• Familiarity with the TypeScript/Node.js ecosystem, particularly NestJS, is preferred.
• Strong data modeling instincts, ideally with MongoDB — schema and index design.
• Experience building async, event-driven systems with a practical grasp of idempotency.
• Hands-on AWS experience (ECS/Fargate, Lambda, SQS/SNS, EventBridge, S3).
• A track record designing and versioning APIs that other teams depend on; GraphQL experience is a plus.
• A track record implementing third-party API integrations (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, Google, Outlook).
• Automated testing across layers; Playwright or comparable E2E experience is a plus.
• Sound judgment on AI integration; production experience with OpenAI APIs is a plus.
• Current, hands-on fluency with agentic AI development tooling across the full lifecycle.
• Excellent written communication — technical documents and PR descriptions that stand on their own.

Our Interview Process

Our process is rigorous and designed to be a real signal — for you and for us. Expect live, interactive technical assessment with our engineers, not take-home busywork or trivia. You’ll be asked to demonstrate your work and reasoning directly and in real time, including how you apply AI tooling. Every candidate meets the team. We move quickly for the right people and give you a clear view of the bar before you accept.