Staff Software Engineer
$170,000–$190,000 year
RemoteUnited States or Canada
Job Summary
Architect and build web applications across Ruby on Rails, Sinatra/Padrino, and Django that directly support our mission. Make consequential technical decisions on infrastructure, data modeling, API design, and emerging technologies with full ownership of the tradeoffs. Set the code quality bar through reviews, architectural guidance, and constructive feedback. Write automated tests that reflect real edge cases, not just coverage targets. Identify performance bottlenecks and systemic issues before they become outages. Mentor other engineers and raise the technical ceiling of the team. Work directly with stakeholders to understand what students and staff actually need, participate in deciding what gets built, and then lead the execution. Reimagine core platform components as we migrate them from Sinatra to Rails and integrate AI/ML technology into our platform to support mastery-driven, adaptive learning.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of software engineering experience
- at least 5 years with Ruby on Rails
- A systems-thinking orientation: you consider scalability, maintainability, and failure modes before writing a line of code
- Strong PostgreSQL and database design skills, including experience with complex queries, indexing strategies, and schema evolution
- Reasonable working familiarity with the full web stack, from infrastructure to CSS
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical decisions in a small, autonomous team environment
- Strong written and verbal communication
- Passion for education and desire to make a positive impact
Desired Qualifications
- Familiarity with higher education or edtech
- Direct experience working with LLMs and generative AI in production
- Familiarity with Docker, Ansible, and/or Terraform
- Experience deploying on GCP
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