Senior Back-End Engineer

The Mission

World Family English is currently undertaking a bold digital transformation project to modernise and augment its product and service offerings. This role would be part of the Innovations arm of World Family English, creating impactful, cross-market, scalable products and services.

About the Role

You’ll join the core English Tab development team — the group responsible for World Family’s flagship digital product. As the Senior Back-End Engineer, you will design, develop, and maintain the systems that power the English Tab, a child-centric English learning device that helps children engage with English in meaningful ways.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain the codebase of the back-end services that power the English Tab.
• Collaborate with front-end engineers, QA specialists, other engineering teams, product managers, and architects to deliver high-quality solutions aligned with product goals.
• Produce maintainable, production-grade software adhering to the company’s quality standards.
• Work closely with DevOps to monitor, optimize, and ensure uptime of critical services.

Core Requirements

• 6+ years of experience as a back-end or full-stack software engineer building Node.js back-ends in TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience with middleware/frameworks such as Express.js or Hono.
• Highly experienced in writing well-structured, typed, modular, and maintainable Clean Code.
• Strong background in unit testing and automated test coverage.
• Experience working with cloud platforms such as Firebase, Google Cloud Platform, AWS, or Azure.
• Understanding of microservice and monolithic architectures and when to apply each.
• Strong proficiency in Object-Oriented Design, Design Patterns, and Dependency Injection.
• Skilled in designing domain models and understanding domain-driven design principles.
• Comfortable designing and implementing REST or GraphQL APIs and schemas.
• Familiar with Continuous Deployment pipelines and modern release processes.
• Comfortable working with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Excellent written and spoken English communication skills.

Stand-out Candidates

• Knowledge of low-code/no-code back-ends, such as Airtable or Zapier.
• Experience with object-relational models and data modelling best practices.
• Experience implementing authentication systems and protocols including SAML, OAuth2, and JWTs.
• Experience with GraphQL federation.
• Independent, proactive problem solver.
• Broad exposure to open-source software and a practical approach to leveraging existing solutions.

Location

About Us

World Family English (WFE) is a leading provider of English language learning products and services primarily for children aged 0 to 7. Its flagship product, Disney World of English, has been the market leader in Japan for more than 30 years. Other than Japan, current markets are Taiwan, Hong Kong/Macau, and South Korea.

Apply by December 4th, 2025

To apply, submit a copy of your CV and a covering letter explaining how you are suited to the role.

The recruitment may be closed earlier if there are sufficient suitable applicants.

First-round interviews are planned to take place w/c 8 December.