Platform Engineer (Nairobi)

Salary range: $53,300 - $61,500 (mid-level), $70,725 - $85,000 (senior)

At Ello, our mission is to maximize the potential of all children. Our first product (Read with Ello) is an AI reading teacher that listens to a child read from real books. We’re now building on the success of Read with Ello and putting together the pieces of the world’s first complete AI teacher for children. We’re a highly technical team building delightful learner-centered experiences which leverage the massive recent advances in AI. Our products put children on a path of lifelong learning, creating the foundation for their future and ours. Together, we believe we can close literacy and educational gaps around the world. We are backed by world-class investors, just closed a Series A, and we’re ready to bring on new talent to help achieve our vision.

About the role

Our Platform Engineering team is looking for a backend developer at Ello who will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our systems and infrastructure. This is a unique opportunity to have a significant impact on our technical direction, taking ownership of infrastructure decisions and driving the successful migration of our projects to AWS. You'll be part of a collaborative team of four based in Nairobi, working closely with other engineers, designers, and stakeholders to deliver high-quality, innovative solutions.

Here are some reasons to be a part of our team

• Join a small but rapidly growing team of A+ engineers in a well-funded company.

• As a Platform Engineer, you'll be a driving force in shaping the future of our technical landscape. Your ideas and expertise will directly influence our systems and infrastructure decisions.

• Be well compensated in U.S. dollars (USD).

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the team to architect, develop, and maintain high-quality software solutions, contributing to the evolution of our V2 and V3 products.

• Contribute to the migration of our systems to AWS, leveraging your DevOps expertise to ensure smooth and efficient deployment and management processes.

• Manage, monitor and optimize AWS infrastructure and services for scalability, security, and performance’

• Write and maintain infrastructure as code (IaC) using tools like Terraform.

• Contribute to the design and development of V2 and V3 iterations of our products, ensuring they are scalable, robust, and user-friendly.

• Participate in code reviews, providing constructive feedback and promoting best practices to maintain code quality and consistency.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather requirements, identify opportunities, and propose innovative technical solutions.

• Troubleshoot and debug issues, implement fixes, and continuously improve the performance and reliability of our applications.

• Stay up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies, bringing fresh ideas and approaches to the team.

Required Experience

• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms, particularly AWS, and a solid understanding of DevOps principles.

• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) for deployment and scaling.

• Familiarity with database technologies such as MySQL and MongoDB

• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively within a diverse team.

We look for candidates who

• Have something to teach us.

• Want to do work they are proud of to ship products they are proud of.

• Have an urge to make a real impact on child development at scale.

• Prefer open and direct communication grounded in empathy to beating around the bush.

• Want to build meaningful relationships at work.

• Take the initiative and take full ownership of their work.

About Ello

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. Ello’s founders have dedicated their careers to pioneering innovation in child development and artificial intelligence. We were part of Y Combinator’s W20 batch and have recently closed a funding Series A; previously announced investors include leading US and European VCs including Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, Homebrew, WndrCo, Human Capital and K9 Ventures.

We’re a small, collaborative team that takes each other’s voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the wider community; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture.

We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that we’re proud of – we believe it’s possible to do both.