Senior backend scalability engineer

Texas Sports Academy is a K-12 school designed for serious student-athletes who want both elite academics and high-level athletic development. Students learn twice as fast as traditional schools in just 2 hours a day, using the same 2-Hour Learning model as Alpha School. We are an AI-first school where AI is woven into how students learn, how the team works, and how we build and scale everything we do. That frees up their entire afternoon for serious training, where they work alongside former pro and D1 athletes coaching them at the highest standard.

We are hiring a Senior Backend Scalability Engineer on a part-time consulting contract to audit our backend systems and make the changes required to keep them fast and reliable as we scale. You will look at our services, databases, APIs, and data flows, find the bottlenecks and design flaws that will break us at the next scale step, and ship the code changes needed to fix them. You will also write clean, direct audits of what you find so our engineering team knows exactly what happened, why it matters, and how it got fixed.

What You'll Do

• Audit Our Backend Systems End to End: Look at our services, APIs, databases, queues, and data flows. Find the hot spots, the design flaws, and the decisions that will not survive our next scale step.
• Write Clear Audit Reports: Document what you found, why it matters, and how to fix it. Written work that our engineering team can act on directly.
• Ship the Fixes: Do not stop at recommendations. Refactor the code, redesign the schemas, add the caching, fix the queries, and get the changes into production yourself where it makes sense.
• Redesign for Scale Where Needed: Rework the parts of our backend that will not scale. Introduce the right patterns, split services where it helps, and remove complexity where it does not.
• Optimize Databases and Data Flows: Fix slow queries, add the right indexes, rework schemas, and cut latency at the layers that actually matter.
• Partner With Our Engineering Team: Work directly with our engineers. Pair, review, and hand off cleanly so what you build actually sticks.

Senior-Level Backend Engineering Experience:

Eight or more years of hands-on backend engineering. You have designed and scaled real production systems for real users.

Deep JavaScript Backend Language Fluency:

You are fluent at a senior level in Node.js or related languages; all relevant infra is in JS/TS.

Database Expertise:

You are fluent in Aurora or comparable relational systems, and you understand how to make them fast at scale.

API Design and Scaling:

You have designed and scaled REST or GraphQL APIs. You know how to keep them fast, backward-compatible, and safe to change.

Distributed Systems Fluency:

You understand caching, queues, background jobs, eventual consistency, and how distributed backends actually fail.

Performance and Load Testing:

You have profiled real systems under real load and can tell the difference between a hot query and a hot loop.

Ships Code:

You are a real engineer, not just an advisor. You are comfortable writing production code and taking responsibility for it.

Strong Written Communication:

You can write an audit report that an engineering team acts on directly.

Location and Setup:

Fully remote, open globally. Reliable internet and a quiet space you can work from.

AI-First Mindset:

You use AI daily as part of your work flows. You are comfortable using AI coding tools to move faster and review your own work.

Bonus Points

• Real Migration Stories: You have led a real system migration, a major refactor, or a database sharding project without breaking production.
• Cost Optimization Wins: You have real stories of cutting infrastructure or compute spend meaningfully without breaking anything.

Type:

Part-time consulting contract

Duration:

Ongoing, with the possibility of moving into a full-time role based on fit and results

Hours:

Part-time to start, flexible based on scope

Location:

Fully remote, anywhere in the world

Why Join Us?

You get to make the calls that keep our backend fast and reliable as we scale, and see your changes go live fast. Your written audits will be read, your code will ship, and the work you do will directly protect the day-to-day experience of real kids in real classrooms. If you are a senior backend engineer who wants a focused, high-signal engagement where your recommendations actually get implemented (by you), this is a good one to take.

Texas Sports Academy is an equal opportunity employer. We hire for character, capability, and mission alignment.