Job Application for Senior Software Engineer, Backend at Coursera Sourcing

Coursera was launched in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. Today, it is one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 191 million registered learners as of September 30, 2025. Coursera partners with over 375 leading universities and industry partners to offer a broad catalogue of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, and degrees. Coursera’s platform innovations — including generative AI-powered features like Coach, Role Play, and Course Builder, and role-based solutions like Skills Tracks — enable instructors, partners, and companies to deliver scalable, personalized, and verified learning. Institutions worldwide rely on Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, students, and citizens in high-demand fields such as GenAI, data science, technology, and business, while learners globally turn to Coursera to master the skills they need to advance their careers. Coursera is a Delaware public benefit corporation and a B Corp.

We’re a global platform aiming to transform lives through learning by offering transformative courses, certificates, and degrees that empower learners worldwide to advance their careers through skill mastery. We’re looking for inventors, innovators, and lifelong learners eager to shape the future of education. If you’re ready to build the global programs and tools that fuel the power of online learning, join Team Coursera.

At Coursera, we are committed to building a globally diverse team and are thrilled to extend employment opportunities to individuals in any country where we have a legal entity. We require candidates to possess eligible working rights and have a compatible timezone overlap with their team to facilitate seamless collaboration. As a remote-first company, our interviews and onboarding are entirely virtual, providing a smooth and efficient experience for our candidates.

Job Overview:

As a Backend Developer, you’ll have a real opportunity to innovate, productize, and iterate at start-up speed. In this role, you’ll take up significant technical ownership for Coursera in these areas: service architecture, product API development, data modeling, and more. Our backend developers mostly work with modern Java (16+), MySQL, DynamoDB, gRPC, GraphQL (DGS), Kafka, and more within a microservices architecture.

Responsibilities:

Design and implement scalable systems and infrastructures
Measure your work thoroughly, analyze results, and generate hypotheses to drive new product changes through A/B testing
Setup monitoring and testing of your APIs and services to better understand real time health of your products

Qualifications:

5+ years of experience working in a relevant software engineering role
Expertise in designing highly-scalable and performant micro-services and storage layers using common frameworks, languages, and infrastructure (e.g. Java, Play/Scala, MySql, Cassandra, Solr, Kafka)
Comfortable working in a fast-moving team environment (we deploy many times a day!)
Data-driven and strongly motivated by success and learnings through experiments and metrics analysis

Compensation

This role is available in the following US Pay Zones:

Zone 2: $150,800 to $188,500

At Coursera, we offer competitive, zone-based pay aligned to your location, experience, and role level across four U.S. pay zones. Our total rewards package goes beyond salary, with comprehensive health and wellness benefits, bonus and RSU equity programs, and global perks designed to help you grow and thrive wherever you are.

US Pay Zones:

US-Z1: Bay Area
US-Z2: NYC and Seattle Metro
US-Z3: CA, WA, NY, NJ, CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, MD, OR, RI, TX, VA
US-Z4: AK, AZ, DE, FL, HI, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, NV, NH, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, UT, VT, WI

If this opportunity interests you, you might like these courses on Coursera:

Coursera is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected class.

If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, please contact us at accommodations@coursera.org.

For California Candidates, please review our CCPA Applicant Notice here.

For our Global Candidates, please review our GDPR Recruitment Notice here.

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Senior Software Engineer, Backend

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