Fast Facts

Coursera is seeking a Senior Software Developer, Backend to innovate and take technical ownership of service architecture and product API development in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include designing scalable systems, conducting A/B testing for product improvements, and monitoring API health.

Skills: Candidates should have 5+ years of software engineering experience, particularly with micro-services, and be proficient in languages and frameworks such as Java and MySQL.

Qualifications: Preferred qualifications include a strong background in scalable system design and comfort in fast-paced, experimental team settings.

Location: This role is remote, allowing flexibility in workspace choices, with operations in California.

Compensation: $135000 - $178000 / Annually

Coursera was launched in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. It is now one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 175 million registered learners as of March 31, 2025. Coursera partners with over 350 leading universities and industry leaders to offer a broad catalog of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, and degrees. Coursera’s platform innovations enable instructors to deliver scalable, personalized, and verified learning experiences to their learners. Institutions worldwide rely on Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, citizens, and students in high-demand fields such as GenAI, data science, technology, and business. Coursera is a Delaware public benefit corporation and a B Corp.

Join us in our mission to create a world where anyone, anywhere can transform their life through access to education. We're seeking talented individuals who share our passion and drive to revolutionize the way the world learns.

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. 

Coursera has a commitment to enabling flexibility and workspace choices for employees. Our interviews and onboarding are entirely virtual, providing a smooth and efficient experience for our candidates. As an employee, we enable you to select your main way of working, whether it's from home, one of our offices or hubs, or a co-working space near you.

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

Basic 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

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

• Object Oriented Java Programming: Data Structures and Beyond Specialization
• Object Oriented Programming in Java Specialization
• Introduction to Programming with Python and Java Specialization
• Functional Programming in Scala Specialization

Coursera offers competitive pay and equitable compensation practices. Our job titles may span more than one career level. This role's targeted hiring base salary range is between $135,000 and 178,000. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, including but not limited to prior work experiences, training/education, transferable skills, business needs, and geographical location. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for variable pay, equity, and benefits. 

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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