Primer is a growing network of K–8 schools restoring the timeless foundations of American education. Inspired by the original teaching primers that shaped a nation of readers, thinkers, and builders, our schools begin with what has always worked, and build for what lies ahead. Close-knit learning environments. Skilled educators. A culture that takes kids seriously as learners and leaders.
Primers shaped the first 200 years of American children. Primer will ready them for the next.
Don’t see the right role for you?
We’re always looking to meet exceptional people. Primer is an end-to-end engineering organization building the operating system for real schools. Our work spans several technical disciplines. A non-exhaustive sample:
Distributed Systems & Data Infrastructure
High-throughput GraphQL services, low-latency event pipelines, schema design for real-time classroom operations, transactional integrity across multi-tenant school networks.Client Systems & Interaction Engineering
Complex TypeScript/React architectures, high-frequency UI state updates, deterministic rendering under poor network conditions, resilient offline behavior, design-system engineering for high-context educational workflows.Networking, Infrastructure & Reliability
Full Dockerized service graph, CI/CD pipelines that ship daily into dozens of live campuses, observability at scale, automated failover, network shaping for unreliable school WiFi, performance engineering across heterogeneous hardware.Realtime Media & Classroom Presence
WebRTC transports, adaptive bitrate + packet recovery strategies, custom SFU optimizations for classrooms, audio/video error correction, telemetry-driven session stability, and real-time presence models for synchronous instruction.Learning Systems, Data Science & ML
End-to-end ETL, feature engineering from student behavior signals, reading/math proficiency modeling, personalization engines, automated teacher/parent narrative generation, and continuous feedback loops driven by real learner data.
We’re moving extremely fast and the surface area keeps growing.
If you think you can push the boundaries of what software can do for real schools, let’s talk.
Primer is a mission-first company. We believe our mission is the highest-leverage way we can create positive change. In service of that, we keep work centered on mission execution and avoid social or political activism at work that’s unrelated to the mission. If that energizes you, we’d love to see you apply.