Software Engineer II - AI

Role Description

At McGraw Hill, our AI Platform team is building intelligent learning experiences used by millions of students and educators worldwide. We're rethinking how people learn by putting generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic workflows at the center of the experience.

We're looking for a Software Engineer II — AI to join our AI Platform team. You'll build the services and APIs that use AI to power student and teacher experiences.

• This is a software engineering role, not a data science or ML role.
• Your job is to take what data scientists produce and turn it into reliable, observable, scalable production systems.
• This is a role designed for a software engineer who's ready to go deeper.
• This is a remote position open to applicants authorized to work for any employer within the United States.

What You'll Learn

• How production AI systems actually behave.
• How senior engineers reason about LLM tradeoffs.
• Write code that runs at the scale of millions of students.
• Receive fast, specific feedback on your work.

What You'll Do

• Build the services that deliver AI to users.
• Work across our backend stack using Python (FastAPI, async/await, Pydantic).
• Ship with care by writing tested, readable code.
• Get good at AI engineering — the software side.
• Collaborate broadly with data scientists, product managers, designers, and other engineers.
• Grow into more by influencing design decisions and mentoring engineers.

Qualifications

• A few years of building real things (2-5 years of professional software development experience).
• Solid backend fundamentals with comfort in any modern backend language (Python preferred).
• Curiosity about AI with some engagement as a software engineer.
• Good engineering instincts and the ability to ask for help when needed.
• Comfort with ambiguity and breaking down medium-sized features.
• Clear communication skills.
• A "low-ego, high-ownership" disposition.

Requirements

• Production experience with AWS or Azure (nice to have).
• Familiarity with frontend work (React or Angular).
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, or RAG architectures.
• Exposure to Go or willingness to learn it.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Terraform, or modern CI/CD (GitHub Actions).
• Background in edtech, accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA), or content-rich product domains.
• Open-source contributions, technical writing, or teaching of any kind.

Benefits

• Opportunity for horizontal and vertical movement and growth throughout the organization.
• Clear career paths for long-term personal and professional growth.
• Annual bonus plan may be provided as part of the compensation package.
• Full range of medical and/or other benefits, depending on the position offered.