Description
At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives.
Our AI team is where a lot of that gets built: applying advanced AI to real problems in learning, and turning research into product capabilities that educators and students use every day.
You'll design the data models, build the services and pipelines that keep them current, and ensure they remain reliable as usage and complexity grow.
Responsibilities
- Own the data models and storage architecture behind our AI systems, across relational, graph, and retrieval-oriented data
- Build and operate the APIs, backend services, and pipelines that keep that data current and accessible
- Design reliable ingestion and update workflows, including incremental processing, schema changes, and safe backfills
- Own data correctness, query performance, and scalability as volume and complexity grow
- Turn prototypes into production-ready data services, scoring workflows, and retrieval components
- Diagnose production issues and improve reliability, observability, and operational efficiency
Requirements
- Six or more years of experience building and operating production backend, data, or distributed systems
- Strong production Python and SQL, including experience building APIs, designing schemas, optimizing queries, and working with large or complex datasets
- Deep experience with relational data systems and strong judgment about when graph or other specialized databases are the right choice
- Experience building reliable ingestion and update pipelines, including incremental processing, data-quality checks, schema changes, and safe backfills
- Experience designing production services with clear API contracts, versioning, error handling, and performance considerations
- Hands-on experience deploying and operating services in AWS using containers, CI/CD, monitoring, and production debugging tools
- Strong engineering practices around testing, code review, observability, documentation, and maintaining systems that other teams depend on
Nice to Have
- Deep experience operating a graph database in production, including traversal performance and query tuning at scale
- Experience with versioned, bitemporal, or event-sourced data systems
- Experience with vector search or semantic retrieval components (pgvector, OpenSearch, Pinecone, or similar)
- Experience with multi-tenant data design and per-tenant isolation
Benefits
- Competitive compensation, plus all full-time employees participate in our ownership program
- Flexible work culture
- Generous time off, including local holidays and our annual “Dim the Lights” period
- Comprehensive wellness programs and mental health support
- Learning and development resources, including professional development tools and tuition reimbursement
- The technology and tools you need to do your best work
- Motivosity employee recognition program
- A culture rooted in inclusivity, support, and meaningful connection