Senior Backend Platform Engineer - AI Enablement (Rails)

About Manifest Global

Manifest Global is dedicated to creating an infrastructure that facilitates global human capital mobility by connecting students, educational institutions, and employers in more than 50 countries. Their portfolio includes Cialfo, an AI-driven college counseling platform used by over 2,000 schools; BridgeU, which provides university guidance for international schools worldwide; Kaaiser, a well-established study abroad counseling service in India and Southeast Asia; and Explore, an AI-powered university outreach program with over 1,000 university partners. Together, these platforms support talent movement across international borders efficiently. Manifest Global has secured $80 million in funding and is in the early stages of growth.

Role Overview

This role transcends traditional backend responsibilities such as writing endpoints and migrations. It involves enhancing and scaling the existing platform that empowers the broader engineering team and AI agents to develop backend features efficiently and safely. This platform includes shared coding standards, a skills library, designated safe contribution zones, and AI-integrated workflows currently in production. The successful candidate will be responsible for advancing this platform to increase the team's development leverage.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the backend platform, including development and maintenance of production Ruby on Rails services and system-wide architecture.
• Design and maintain robust RESTful APIs consumable by other teams.
• Manage the complete data layer across services.
• Develop and refine workflows, standards, and guardrails enabling Quality Engineers to generate test scaffolding, Product Managers to confidently ship configuration and feature flag updates, and AI agents to operate reliably within the codebase.
• Create shared AI conventions that ensure consistency across backend code generation, schema migrations, and other automated outputs, regardless of the origin (human or AI).
• Build and expand a backend skills library that encapsulates Rails best practices, domain models, service contracts, and query patterns for team-wide reusability.
• Implement and improve 'spec-to-endpoint' and ticket-to-migration pipelines, streamlining backend development from concept to delivery.
• Develop AI-agent backend infrastructure, including runtimes, tool-calling frameworks, data retrieval pipelines, and evaluation systems that support existing products like Saige and Explore and scale for future growth.
• Maintain ongoing feedback channels with engineering, quality assurance, and product teams to identify and resolve platform issues promptly.

Success Milestones

• Within the first 30 days, comprehensively understand the current platform, workflows, and AI integrations, identifying strengths and weaknesses.
• Within 90 days, deliver meaningful improvements to the backend skills library, solidify drifting conventions, and resolve pain points impacting the team's productivity.
• Within six months, significantly enhance platform capabilities, ensure AI features sustain higher production loads efficiently, and enable non-engineer stakeholders to contribute safely with reduced follow-up work.

Candidate Profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a closely related discipline, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Minimum of 5 years experience designing, building, and supporting backend services in production, with a strong focus on Ruby on Rails.
• Expertise in PostgreSQL or MySQL databases, including performance tuning and scaling.
• Proven experience building and maintaining RESTful APIs designed for consumption by multiple internal teams.
• Proficient daily use of AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) with experience adapting these tools for wider team adoption.
• A mindset aimed at empowering non-engineers interacting with the platform by designing for their capabilities rather than limiting access due to risk concerns.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with AI or Large Language Model backend development, including retrieval pipelines, agent runtimes, tool invocation, evaluation, and prompt version control.
• Background in developer experience or platform engineering, such as building internal SDKs, shared libraries, and creating opinionated documentation.
• Experience working with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP, coupled with strong testing practices using frameworks like RSpec or Capybara.
• Demonstrated ability to build solutions that improve workflows for non-engineering collaborators.

About Manifest Global

The company addresses the pressing global challenge of workforce mobility, responding to a market with $700 billion in annual remittance flows and an expected shortage of 85 million workers in developed countries by 2030. Manifest Global’s products have deep penetration across educational institutions globally, making a tangible impact on talent migration. With $80 million raised from investors such as Tiger Global, SIG, and Square Peg, they have a strong foundation to continue innovation.