Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Job description

Company Description

When you join Turnitin, you’ll be welcomed into a company that is a recognized innovator in the global education space. For over 25 years, Turnitin has partnered with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Over 21,000 academic institutions, publishers, and corporations use our services: Feedback Studio, Originality, Gradescope, ExamSoft, Similarity, and iThenticate.

Experience a remote-centric culture that empowers you to work with purpose and accountability in a way that best suits you, supported by a comprehensive package that prioritizes your overall well-being. Our diverse community of colleagues are all unified by a shared desire to make a difference in education.

Turnitin is a global organization with team members in over 35 countries including the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, India, and the Philippines.

Job Description

Turnitin’s Paper to Digital (P2D) is an innovative extension of Feedback Studio that helps educators transition from grading handwritten assignments to a fully digital workflow. It allows scanned paper submissions—whether short answers, diagrams, or multiple-choice—to be securely uploaded, matched with students, and graded consistently online. P2D improves efficiency, reduces bias, and supports large-scale assessment needs in both remote and in-person settings.

We’re expanding the P2D team to:

• Develop new end-user features that enhance the digital grading experience
• Improve and maintain existing backend systems for long-term performance and stability
• Ensure the platform continues to meet high standards of reliability, scalability, and security
• Support growing usage demands, including bulk uploads and collaborative grading workflows

As a Senior Software Engineer – Backend, you’ll help build and evolve the backend systems that support P2D’s core capabilities. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving complex problems at scale and contributing to meaningful improvements in education technology.

You will:

• Design, implement, and maintain scalable, high-performance backend services
• Work with serverless architecture using AWS Lambda and related cloud technologies
• Collaborate closely with QA, Product, UX, and Support teams to ensure smooth delivery
• Contribute to technical discussions and decisions that shape the future of the product
• Champion best practices for code quality, testing, and monitoring

Responsibilities:

• Contribute towards design and develop robust, scalable backend services using AWS Lambda
• Design / implement RESTful APIs and event-driven systems
• Optimize existing services for improved performance and cost-efficiency
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate backend services with frontend applications
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines with github actions
• Conduct code reviews and collaborate with other engineers
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues in production environments
• Continue to grow and learn as a software engineer

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend development experience (distributed systems or microservices preferred).
• Strong Java skills and Maven proficiency.
• Solid experience with AWS serverless (Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, Step Functions).
• Familiar with event-driven architecture and microservices design.
• Hands-on experience with DynamoDB, or a strong foundation with NoSQL and eagerness to learn DynamoDB rapidly.
• Proficient in developing automated tests for backend services.
• Comfortable with Git and Github workflows.
• Analytical mindset and strong troubleshooting skills.
• Effective communicator and team collaborator.

Additional Information

Total Rewards @ Turnitin

Turnitin maintains a Total Rewards package that is competitive within the local job market. People tend to think about their Total Rewards monetarily — solely as regular pay plus bonus or commission. This is what they earn in exchange for what they do. However, Turnitin delivers more than just these components. Beyond the intrinsic rewards of unleashing your potential to positively impact global education, and thriving in an organization that is free of politics and full of humble, inclusive and collaborative teammates, the extrinsic rewards at Turnitin include generous time off and health and wellness programs that offer choice and flexibility and provide a safety net for the challenges that life presents from time to time. Experience a remote-centric culture that empowers you to work with purpose and accountability in a way that best suits you, supported by a comprehensive package that prioritizes your overall well-being.

Our Mission is to ensure the integrity of global education and meaningfully improve learning outcomes.

Our Values underpin everything we do.

• Customer Centric- We realize our mission to ensure integrity and improve learning outcomes by  putting educators and learners at the center of everything we do.
• Passion for Learning- We seek out teammates that are constantly learning and growing and build a workplace which enables them to do so.
• Integrity - We believe integrity is the heartbeat of Turnitin. It shapes our products, the way we treat each other, and how we work with our customers and vendors.
• Action & Ownership- We have a bias toward action and empower teammates to make decisions.
• One Team- We strive to break down silos, collaborate effectively, and celebrate each other’s successes.
• Global Mindset - We respect local cultures and embrace diversity. We think globally and act locally to maximize our impact on education.

Global Benefits

• Remote First Culture
• Health Care Coverage*
• Education Reimbursement*
• Competitive Paid Time Off
• 4 Self-Care Days per year
• National Holidays*
• 2 Founder Days + Juneteenth Observed
• Paid Volunteer Time*
• Charitable contribution match*
• Monthly Wellness or Home Office Reimbursement/*
• Access to Modern Health (mental health platform)
• Parental Leave*
• Retirement Plan with match/contribution*

\* varies by country

Seeing Beyond the Job Ad

At Turnitin, we recognize it’s unrealistic for candidates to fulfill 100% of the criteria in a job ad.  We encourage you to apply if you meet the majority of the requirements because we know that skills evolve over time. If you’re willing to learn and evolve alongside us, join our team!