Backend Engineer / Developer

acemate is building the leading AI learning & teaching platform for higher education institutions. We have strong traction secured funding and are entering an exciting growth phase. Were looking for a passionate Backend Engineer to drive our product forward and help us scale.

About acemate

Founded less than a year ago acemate has quickly become Germanys leading AI learning platform for universities trusted by top-tier institutions across three countries including TU Munich WHU and the Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer (DIHK).

• Our Mission: Democratizing access to personalized learning. We dont believe that AI will replace educators. Instead we empower them to design and deliver personalized learning experiences at scale.
• Our Growth: Weve raised pre-seed funding and are growing rapidly. While we focus on higher education today were already expanding into new regions and markets.
• Our Culture: Were a young driven team passionate about tackling the toughest challenges in education. We embrace builder culture and minimize scheduled meetings for ad-hoc discussions and maximized focus on coding and creating.

Meet the Team

• Antong (CEO): BCG BMW & Antler background leads business strategy DJ by night
• Jan (CTO): NLP research experience from SAP & N26 morning bike commuter
• Paul (CPO): Product expert with startup and education research background devoted dog dad
• Emile (Fullstack): Ex-founder with product & AI background ETH graduate avid runner
• Anas (Fullstack): TypeScript specialist functional programming enthusiast chief photography officer
• Alejandro (Founders Associate): Mechanical engineering background Roland Berger & Amazon experience reggaeton enjoyer

We have an office in Berlin and believe in the value of in-person work but were also realistic about the time people spend commuting.

Tasks

What Youll Do

As a core team member youll have significant influence on product decisions technical architecture and overall strategy. Youll focus on backend work and help scale the systems that power our product and AI features.

• Design and implement modern APIs background jobs and internal tools
• Help shape infrastructure for reliability performance and security
• Contribute to access control systems and enterprise-grade integrations (e.g. SSO multi-tenancy white-labeling)
• Collaborate closely with the product team to turn user needs into robust backend solutions
• Work on AI workflows and async pipelines that make learning smarter and more personalized

Examples from the past of what you might build:

• Complex AI pipelines that extract textual and visual content from diverse documents and embed topics in knowledge graphs
• Backend migration from a monolithic fullstack setup to a dedicated API layer with granular access control
• Custom authorization engine to handle growing complexity across different institutional settings

Tech Stack:

• API backend: Hono tRPC Bun Typescript
• Database: PostgreSQL (via Supabase)
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers Pages Workflows R2 KV) Google Cloud (Gemini Cloud Run)
• Tooling: Sentry PostHog Langfuse Stripe
• AI: Custom pipelines built with the Vercel AI SDK
• Frontend: TypeScript React Tailwind CSS

Dont worry if youre not familiar with everything from the start. We believe in your ability to learn fast and adapt to new frameworks and tools as we go.

Requirements

What Were Looking For

• Strong backend skills: Solid experience working with APIs job queues databases and distributed systems
• Builder mindset: Youre hands-on take ownership and think in terms of outcomes
• Startup experience: Youre comfortable in fast-paced evolving environments
• Balanced AI approach: You knew how to code before Cursor and AI tools but understand how to leverage them effectively
• Product passion: High identification with our mission to transform education
• Bonus: Experience with auth systems infra/devops or frontend work ( salary package with equity component
• Working in a small but driven team built around performance and learning
• Flexible environment with high degree of autonomy and option to work remotely
• Frequent team events and acemate parties!

Ready to Join Us

Send us your GitHub profile your portfolio and any other relevant links and lets build the future of education together.

Were also hiring a Founding Engineer - reach out to us if you know someone.