Design and build core components of Kerno's validation engine, code indexation, test generation and execution
Work building AI agents that are in charge of test generation and code analysis
Build and improve the platform layer local and/or remote environment orchestration
Own features end-to-end: scoping, design, implementation, testing, and rollout
Collaborate closely with the founding team on technical direction and architecture
Help extend language and framework support as we grow beyond our current stack
Contribute to the reliability and performance of a system that developers depend on for fast feedback

8+ years of professional backend development experience, with strong proficiency in Kotlin (or another JVM based language)
Experience designing and building distributed systems or complex backend services
Comfortable working with multiple languages, we use whatever is the best tool for the right solution
Strong understanding of testing methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and developer tooling
Experience with or strong interest in AI agents development
Familiarity with containerization and local environment orchestration (Docker, etc.)
Experience working with databases
Ability to work autonomously in a remote environment and communicate clearly in writing
A product minded person, you care about why you're building something, not just how
Nice to Have
Experience building developer tools, IDE extensions, or CLI tooling
Experience with message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
Familiarity with LLM APIs and prompt engineering in production contexts
Experience at an early-stage startup

Hard problems: You'll work on code analysis, AI-powered test generation, and real-time validation. This isn't a simple CRUD API.
High impact: Small team, direct influence on product direction and architecture
Remote-first: Work from wherever you do your best work
Quarterly off-sites: Meet your colleagues in person once a quarter
AI-native: We're not adding AI as an afterthought. It's core to everything we build.
Growing market: AI assisted development is exploding. The need for validation tooling is growing with it.

Senior Backend Engineer – Kotlin/Java

Key skills