Fullstack Engineer (MERN LMS) — Contract, Remote

Fullstack Engineer MERN LMS — Contract, Remote Location: 100% Remote Capacity: Full-time Role Type: Independent contractor / Self-employed Background RealEstateU is a leading U.S.-based real estate education provider with 100k users. We're currently rebuilding our technical surfaces to support rapid growth, both existing and new. We believe that by relying on your good judgment, using AI as a force multiplier, that rapid improvements and new standards can be set across our technical infrastructure. The Role This is a role for an engineer who wants ownership of systems, who appreciates having a big impact in a small team, and who wants to uplift a platform already operating at scale. You will have a high degree of autonomy in how you solve problems. AI should already be extensively integrated into your workflow—you should genuinely enjoy using it as a natural extension of how you build and think. This role focuses on establishing new standards over our existing LMS, but we do have a range of new projects which you will also have opportunity to work with. LMS: With the LMS, we are looking to improve our internal ownership of the platform which is currently maintained by an external contractor. Establishing ownership means getting involved with maintenance, preventing regression, and redeveloping for quality and consistency. CI/CD: We must reduce time from ‘ticket’ to ‘production release’ (which currently sits in the realm of months). This will require auditing and modernizing the existing supply chain, test suite, linter rules, GitHub Actions, etc. Architectural scope: The platform has grown substantially over the years. We now find that too much functionality is trapped within a single development environment. We will deprecate some of this in favor of dedicated microservices or new webapps to allow a more asynchronous release schedule. API : We need robust APIs to integrate with new external services and to better leverage our data. We also need to maintain existing connections with BioSig, Honorlock, Stripe, SendGrid, and Zapier. Frontend Modernization: We’re interested in redeveloping student-facing areas using modern, high-performance frameworks to ensure our LMS becomes a marketable product instead of a means to an end. Backend documentation: We’d like to facilitate knowledge transfer early on and sweep the whole system before making many changes. By creating a new documentation structure, in cooperation with the PM, you will build familiarity and introduce an abstraction layer which supports agentic coding. Although not the primary focus of this role, we do have some other projects which you may need to integrate with, or may be able to contribute to. Website + Frontend: We are modernizing our frontend, powered by Next.js, shadcn, Base UI, and a custom design system following DTCG proposed standards. We’d like to use this as a springboard to establish common primitives, tokens, and components across all surfaces. Internal dashboards: We’ll be working on a number of dashboards to support our business processes, including for B2B sales/partners, and internal KPI. The Stack & Environment LMS (live) Backend: Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB Atlas. Frontend: React. Infrastructure: Azure, GitHub. Integrations: Stripe, PayPal, BioSig, Honorlock, SendGrid, Zapier. AI: Azure AI Foundry, Anthropic API, OpenAI API. Experience with Python (or Go) could also be useful but is not required. We are also interested in building with Next.js, shadcn, Base UI, and Tailwind. About You Ownership: You don't need a PM to tell you when a module requires refactoring, or when a monitoring gap needs to be filled. You proactively assert standards which simplify or uplift the project. MERN experience: Although you are interested in other stacks and modern frameworks, you do have years of experience with complex MERN products Strong English: You speak fluent English and can hold technical conversations without ambiguity. AI-Augmented: Your work has recently been accelerated by Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, and you're excited about how you can leverage these at a scale that was previously impossible in small teams or solo-operations. Frontend: You're reluctant to take the ‘cheap path’ of adding one more class or !important flag. You spend time ensuring that design decisions are made correctly at the foundation and propagate through the product instead of being constantly redefined. Logistics & Perks Fully remote: Work from anywhere with an international team. Autonomy: Work directly with Founders and the Product Manager to define deliverables and roadmap. No micromanagement: We enable you to make progress in the way which works for you, instead of blocking you with excessive process and people. AI subscription: We will set you up with a subscription to the AI coding harness of your choice (e.g. Claude Code Max, Codex Pro, or Cursor Ultra). Scaled product: This is an opportunity to make your impact on an already scaled product with proven revenue. This is not a startup.