Kyra is an enterprise influencer marketing platform working with brands like SharkNinja, Coach, H&M, Ray-Ban, and Converse. Our platform manages the full lifecycle — creator discovery, campaign management, content review, payments, analytics, and AI-powered intelligence across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
THE ROLEWe’re looking for a senior backend engineer with sharp product judgement. You’ll work alongside our engineering lead on a platform that processes millions of creator data points, runs real-time analytics, and powers AI-driven workflows.
This isn’t a “wait for a fully-scoped ticket” role. You’ll take ambiguous direction, make calls, and ship features end-to-end — including deploying them yourself. We have infra already; we need someone who can operate inside it confidently, not someone who wants to rebuild it.
WHAT YOU’LL ACTUALLY DO
• Build and maintain domain modules in a DDD-style Node.js/TypeScript monorepo.
• Take vague product direction, sharpen it into a real spec, and ship a v1 — then iterate.
• Design APIs, write docs, and manage database schemas and migrations.
• Build features that span our main transactional backend and a separate analytics backend running heavy queries over creator data.
• Write services that integrate with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube APIs.
• Work with queue workers for background job processing (media analysis, outreach, data syncing).
• Deploy your own services to our cloud infrastructure, write the migrations, watch them go out safely.
• Investigate production issues when they touch your code — trace through the observability stack to find the cause.
REQUIRED — NON-NEGOTIABLE
• 6+ years backend development with Node.js and TypeScript in production.
• Product mindset — you’ve shipped features where the brief was a paragraph, not a ticket. You ask why before how, make calls when requirements are vague, and iterate after release. You’ve sat across from non-engineers and left with a sharper problem than you walked in with.
• Strong relational database experience — schema design, query optimisation, safe migrations at scale.
• Comfortable deploying and operating your own services on a major cloud provider — containers, CI/CD pipelines, the basics of running things in production. You don’t need to be an infra specialist, but you don’t need handholding either.
• Queue-based background job processing patterns.
• REST API design and documentation.
• Git workflow maturity — branching strategies, code review, migration safety. You understand why you don’t run destructive commands on a production migration.
STRONGLY PREFERRED
• Shipped AI features to production — you know what evals are for, why prompts regress, and why “it worked in testing” isn’t enough.
• Columnar / analytics databases for heavy aggregate queries.
• In-memory caching and session stores.
• DDD or domain-driven design — explicit module boundaries, repositories, services, event-driven patterns.
• Production observability — you’ve triaged real issues, not just configured dashboards.
• OAuth, OTP, or session-based auth systems in production.
NICE TO HAVE
• Social media platform APIs (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube).
• Search infrastructure for large datasets.
• Monorepo tooling and workflows.
• Side projects, OSS contributions, or tools you’ve built for yourself that other people now use — signal that you ship for the love of shipping.
WHAT THIS PERSON LOOKS LIKE
• Holds opinions and changes them fast — you’ll ship the wrong thing sometimes and replace it a week later. That’s the job.
• Debugs across boundaries — when a metric shows the wrong number, you can trace it from the frontend component through the API layer down to the database query and figure out where it breaks.
• Writes code that doesn’t need babysitting — proper validation, error handling, and patterns other team members can follow.
• Communicates proactively — posts in Slack when deploying, writes migration plans before running them, documents API contracts for the frontend team.
• Moves fast without breaking things — we deploy to production multiple times a week. You should be comfortable with that cadence while still being careful.
TEAM
A small, high-output engineering team (~10 people) led by the current engineering lead. Async standups, weekly refinement, ship directly to production.
This is a heavy AI-usage environment — AI tooling is woven into how we build, review, and ship. Comfort using it daily is expected.
💟 Support
If you have a condition or require an adjustment to our interview process - please let us know so we can make adjustments to support you. Please note that when you submit an application or resume, your data will be processed in line with our privacy policy.
Skills Required
- 4+ years backend development with Node.js and TypeScript in production
- Strong PostgreSQL experience in schema design, query optimisation, migrations
- Experience with AWS services like ECS, RDS, S3, Lambda
- Proficiency in Docker and writing Dockerfiles
- Experience in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions or equivalent
- Familiarity with queue systems (BullMQ, SQS, etc.)
- REST API design experience with frameworks like Express
- Maturity in git workflow and understanding of migration safety
What We Do
Kyra is a global creator economy company bridging the gap between brands and TikTok creators. We are a team of creators at our core, producing best-in-class social content geared for Gen-Z while accelerating a world for creators to do the same with ease. The company encompasses Kyra Originals, originally produced TikTok channels reaching more than 13M monthly viewers; Kyra Profile, a Gen Z creator incubator program; Kyra Studios, a production studio creating social content on behalf of brands; and a brand new product offering coming soon. Kyra works with a diverse slate of creators including Abby Roberts, Iconicakes, and Nintendo Grl, and global blue-chip brands such as Nike, Converse, Levi’s, Calvin Klein and more. Learn more at Kyra.com. Kyra has fostered a dynamic work environment, creating a culture for a diverse and creative team with innovative ideas driving the business, and creator economy, forward into the future. If interested in a role, please apply!
