Principal Software Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Description:

Overview:

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.

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.

• Q2-2026 Shareholder Letter
• Q1-2026 Shareholder Letter
• Q4-2025 Shareholder Letter

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering with deep hands-on experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems; 3+ years leading technical direction across multiple teams.
• Expertise in service-oriented and event-driven architectures; microservices for UX and APIs in cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Strong data systems background: streaming (e.g., Kinesis/Kafka), big-data processing (e.g., Spark/Hive), and storage (DynamoDB/Redis/RDBMS).
• Proficiency in CI/CD and infrastructure as code (e.g., CodeDeploy/CodeBuild, Terraform/CloudFormation) ; solid Linux and command-line skills.
• AI/ML experience shipping to production: designing RAG pipelines, model serving, recommendations/ranking, evaluation (offline/online), monitoring, and drift/quality management.
• Responsible AI practices: privacy, security, safety, bias mitigation, and auditability; experience integrating AI guardrails into apps and platforms.
• 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) and deploying large-scale web applications.
• Aptitude to quickly learn new languages/technologies ; growth mindset and high ownership.
• 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.
• Architect and deliver cross-cutting, highly scalable systems (e.g., live learning platform, eventing/data pipelines, identity/auth, APIs).
• Lead AI architecture end-to-end: design LLM/RAG systems, recommendations/ranking, vector search, feature stores, and online/offline evaluation loops.
• Productionize ML/LLM solutions with robust MLOps/LLMOps (model/prompt versioning, CI/CD for models, canaries, shadow deploys, monitoring, drift detection).
• Ensure responsible AI: establish guardrails for privacy, safety, bias, and prompt-injection defense in partnership with Security/Legal/Compliance.
• Drive performance, scalability, and resiliency (caching, backpressure, idempotency, multi-region, disaster recovery); own SLOs and observability.
• Raise the quality bar through hands-on coding on critical paths, design reviews, documentation, automated testing, and continuous delivery.
• Champion secure-by-default and privacy-by-design; lead threat modeling and collaborate on compliance needs (e.g., GDPR/CCPA/SOX/NIST).
• Partner with product, data science/ML, design, and engineering leadership to sequence investments and align on outcomes and trade-offs.
• Mentor and uplevel engineers and managers; 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 (FinOps).

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-Benchmarked Compensation: Earn a market-leading rate set in U.S. dollars, paid to you in local currency.
• 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.