Software Engineer (Remote in U.S.)

Who We Are

Criteria is a leading talent success company empowering organizations to make smarter, more objective hiring decisions through science-based assessments and talent management solutions. Serving thousands of customers worldwide, we’re committed to creating fairer, more inclusive hiring processes that highlight potential and reduce bias. Headquartered in Los Angeles with a global presence, our collaborative culture values innovation, employee growth, and making a positive impact for both our clients and our team.

About the Role

We are looking for a Software Engineer with strong back-end development skills in PHP (Laravel), MySQL, and AWS to join our engineering team. In this role, you’ll contribute to building scalable APIs, AI pipelines, and system integrations that power our products.

This position is part of the "Develop by Criteria" team—a fast-moving, startup-style group within Criteria focused on building best-in-class AI infrastructure to support our post-hire application. The team is small, agile, and collaborative, consisting of two engineers, a product director, and a designer, all working quickly to deliver impactful features. Although in the Develop Pod, you’ll be part of our broader platform team, and a member of Criteria’s global engineering team.

You’ll work across a modern tech stack including PHP (Laravel), MySQL, AWS (EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, API Gateway, and other serverless services), with significant opportunities to build AI-powered features and pipelines.

What You'll Do

• Build and maintain scalable backend APIs and services using PHP (Laravel) and MySQL.
• Design and implement AI pipelines and solutions, including RAG databases and multi-agent LLM systems.
• Develop system integrations with third-party platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and calendar services.
• Build modern cloud-based architectures using AWS services, including both traditional and serverless components.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and other engineers to deliver high-impact, customer-focused features.
• Explore, propose, and implement AI-driven solutions that enhance our product and customer experience.
• Contribute to a strong testing culture by writing tests, promoting code quality, and delivering reliable, maintainable code.
• Contribute to and refine CI/CD pipelines using CircleCI, and ensure the delivery of high-quality, well-tested code.
• Participate in system monitoring, troubleshooting, and ongoing operational improvements.

What We're Looking For

Must-Have Skills

• Strong back-end experience with PHP (Laravel) and MySQL.
• Proven ability to design and deliver scalable API architectures.
• Hands-on experience building AI pipelines, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems and multi-agent LLM architectures.
• Experience with AWS services, including EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, API Gateway, and related cloud infrastructure.
• Experience integrating with external platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and calendar services.
• Comfortable working in a CI/CD environment, ideally with CircleCI.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across globally distributed teams.

Nice to Have

• Front-end development experience with React, JavaScript, and TypeScript.
• Experience designing and implementing systems that leverage Model Context Protocol (MCP) for advanced AI workflows in a fast-paced, agile environment.
• Experience working closely with Product teams to translate customer needs into technical solutions.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles.
• AWS Certification (Developer Associate or higher).
• Contributions to open-source projects or personal tech initiatives.

Why Join Us? 

• Build and shape the front-end experiences of impactful products.
• Work on exciting AI-driven features within a modern, cloud-based architecture.
• Grow your skills within a collaborative, supportive engineering culture.
• Remote-friendly and flexible work environment.
• Be part of a company that values diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Our Mission around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We passionately believe that fostering a culture centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion drives innovation, creates healthy and high-performing teams, and delivers superior customer experiences. Our commitment is to create and nurture a global company culture where we confidently bring our authentic selves to work every day. Here, the only criteria for advancement are the quality of our work, the contributions we make to our teams and the business, and our ability to lead. We value, explore, and appreciate our individual differences.