Junior Software Engineer, Full-Stack

Epic Kids is the leading digital reading platform built for kids 12 and under, trusted by millions of children, educators, and families around the world. They are seeking a Junior Software Engineer, Full-Stack to write code across their web stack with the guidance of senior engineers, focusing on both front-end and back-end development. This role is fully remote and encourages new and recent graduates to apply.

Responsibilities:

• Implement well-scoped front-end features and UI changes in Angular (TypeScript, SCSS) under the guidance of senior engineers
• Implement well-scoped back-end endpoints and changes against MySQL, working in PHP (Symfony + Doctrine ORM) on existing application code and in Go on newer services as the team's Go footprint expands
• Investigate and fix bugs across the stack—reproduce the issue, identify the cause with help when needed, and ship the fix
• Write unit tests for the code you ship and keep tests passing on the areas you touch
• Participate in code reviews as both author and reviewer
• Work with designers, product managers, and senior engineers to translate small user-facing requirements into shipped changes
• Maintain documentation—READMEs, code comments, and onboarding notes—for the areas you work in
• Use AI-assisted development tools to support learning and productivity, ensuring you understand and can defend every line of code you commit
• Take on progressively larger and more independent scopes of work as you ramp on the codebase, supported by pairing and code walkthroughs with senior engineers

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree (recently completed or completing within the next 6 months) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a closely related field—or equivalent practical preparation (e.g., bootcamp + substantial portfolio)
• Solid grasp of programming fundamentals: data structures, control flow, basic algorithms, object-oriented programming
• Hands-on coding experience in at least one modern programming language through coursework, personal projects, internships, or open-source contributions
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (or TypeScript) at a level sufficient to build simple interactive web pages
• Familiarity with Git and pull-request-based workflows
• Basic familiarity with relational databases and SQL (SELECT, JOIN, simple WHERE clauses)
• Eagerness to learn, openness to feedback, and willingness to ask questions rather than guess
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English for daily collaboration and technical documentation
• Coursework, internship, or side-project exposure to a modern component-based front-end framework (Angular, React, or Vue) and reactive patterns (RxJS, hooks, or similar)
• Coursework, internship, or side-project exposure to a server-side language (PHP or Go especially welcomed; Java, Python, or Node.js also fine) — bonus if used with a framework such as Symfony, Spring, Laravel, Express, or Django, or with Go's standard library and common patterns (HTTP handlers, goroutines, modules)
• Exposure to an ORM (Doctrine, Hibernate, Eloquent, Prisma, TypeORM, or similar)
• Exposure to unit-testing frameworks (Jasmine/Karma, Jest, PHPUnit, Go's testing package, JUnit, pytest, etc.)
• Exposure to Docker or containerized local development
• Exposure to any cloud platform (GCP preferred; AWS or Azure also welcomed) — e.g., deploying a personal project, working through a free-tier tutorial
• Internship experience at a software company
• Open-source contributions, hackathon projects, capstone work, or other evidence of engineering curiosity outside of coursework
• Working proficiency in Mandarin Chinese to collaborate with global engineering and business partners
• Interest in ed-tech, children's media, or content-platform work