Principal Software Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Description:

Overview:

We are looking for a Principal Engineer in LATAM to join our team! As the Principal Engineer, you will define and drive Nerdy’s technical vision and architecture across multiple teams, architect complex systems at scale, and elevate engineering quality while advancing AI-powered capabilities that improve how learners and tutors connect and succeed.

This is a high-impact role for an engineer who can move fluidly across the stack, from high-traffic user interfaces to high-scale services, while mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across the organization.

About Nerdy:

At Nerdy (NYSE: NRDY) - the company behind Varsity Tutors - we’re redrawing the blueprint of learning. Our Live + AI™ platform fuses real-time human expertise with proprietary generative-AI systems, setting a new bar for measurable academic impact at global scale.

We recruit the kind of technologists and operators you’d bet on as solo founders - people who turn ambiguous problems into shipping code, iterate faster than markets move, and compound their advantage with every data point. In an era where great employees can deliver 10-times the leverage of the merely good, we back those who play to win.

Fortune favors the bold. Join us.

How we compete:

• AI-Native at every level
  From the CEO to day-one hires, everyone builds and ships with generative AI. If you’re not wielding AI, you’re not done.
• Entrepreneurial velocity
  Move at founder speed, prototype in hours, and measure in real user outcomes. Slow teams die.
• Free-market rigor
  Ideas rise or fall on merit and results - no committees, no politics, no cap on upside.
• Full-stack ownership
  You design, build, and run what you ship; accountability is a feature, not a bug.
• Reward for contribution
  Pay rises with impact, not years. Outstanding results earn outsized rewards. We evaluate both what you achieve and how you achieve it: living our leadership principles and using AI effectively are formally measured and rewarded.
• Relentless exploration
  Push the frontier of generative AI in live learning and - because only the paranoid survive - questioning every legacy assumption along the way.
• Is Apolitical
  You stay focused on mission-aligned outcomes, not distractions or unrelated causes.

If you’re a technically minded builder who thrives on open competition, personal responsibility, and the chance to redefine how the world learns - while continually stretching the limits of what generative AI can do - come do the most ambitious and rewarding work of your career here. Learn more at nerdy.com.

• Q1-2026 Shareholder Letter
• Q4-2025 Shareholder Letter
• Q3-2025 Shareholder Letter

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering with deep hands-on experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems; and leading technical direction across multiple teams.
• Expertise in service-oriented and event-driven architectures; microservices for UX and APIs in cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Explicit mentoring of senior-level engineers regularly, leading to results.
• AI/ML experience shipping to production: designing RAG pipelines, model serving, recommendations/ranking, monitoring, and drift/quality management.
• AI-native developer productivity: skilled with tools that accelerate teams (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Make.com, n8n, Supabase, Netlify, Vercel, Grok, Bolt) and with prompt/tool orchestration and evaluation.
• Strong coding fundamentals (OO design, algorithms, data structures) in one or more languages (e.g., Python, Java, Go, TypeScript).
• Clear communicator with executive presence; able to translate complex technical trade-offs for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Familiarity with AWS services (e.g., EC2, RDS, Kinesis, DynamoDB), Supabase or/and Netlify and deploying large-scale web applications.
• Aptitude to quickly learn new languages/technologies ; growth mindset and high ownership.
• Ability to implement customer-facing solutions that solve the customers' true needs with exceptional user experiences.
• Understand and appreciate that Nerdy is an apolitical company, united in the focus on helping people learn.

Responsibilities:

• Set the org-wide architectural strategy and guardrails; create reference designs and patterns that align teams on a coherent technical direction.
• Serve as the technical point of reference for the broader engineering team, ensuring best practices in architecture, performance optimization, and accessibility standards are upheld.
• Architect and deliver cross-cutting, highly scalable systems.
• Leverage AI-native tools and approaches to improve development speed, product capabilities, and engineering effectiveness across the software lifecycle.
• Drive performance, scalability, and resiliency; own SLOs and observability.
• Partner with product, data science/ML, design, and engineering leadership to sequence investments and align on outcomes and trade-offs.
• Contribute to the engineering department's strategy and vision, bringing innovative ideas to improve our customer-facing experiences.
• Mentor and uplevel engineers lead architecture forums/guilds; influence through clarity, empathy, and data.
• Operate iteratively with a focus on quality; participate in on-call, lead incident response/postmortems, and drive reliability and cost stewardship.

Unleash Your Potential at Nerdy:

At Nerdy, you'll earn your success through meritocracy and exceptional outcomes. Our benefits reward performance and initiative:

• Competitive USD Compensation: Enjoy a market-leading rate.
• 100% Remote (Home Country Only): Work from anywhere in your home country—no relocation required, no borders crossed.
• Flexible Time Off: Our flexible PTO lets you recharge on your own terms and when you need it the most.
• Local Holiday Pay: We honor your nation’s official holidays with paid time off—celebrate what matters to you.
• Continuous Learning: Get a free, all-inclusive learning membership for you and your household—including 1-on-1 tutoring hours, unlimited on-demand classes, and access to our full suite of learning products and services.
• Supercharge with AI: Gain exclusive access to cutting-edge AI tools that boost your productivity, making you feel almost super-human (cape not included).
• Feedback-Rich, Collaborative Culture: Tap into regular training, peer reviews, and a team that treats every team member as a vital collaborator and owner in our success.
• Make a Global Impact: Your expertise fuels an innovative platform used by learners around the world—be part of something transformative.

The Bottom Line:

If you're driven by impact, energized by ownership, and excited to help shape what’s next, you’ll thrive here. We move fast, think big, and reward those who deliver. This isn’t a traditional corporate environment - it’s a place to do the most meaningful work of your career.