Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. StrongMind is a remote-first education and technology company on a mission to transform learning for students, families, and educators across the country. The role of Staff Software Engineer involves leading the design and implementation of scalable AI-enabled products and systems, ensuring high-quality engineering practices while collaborating with cross-functional teams.
Responsibilities
- Lead design reviews and implementation for larger, cross-cutting efforts; set technical direction within a scope
- Establish reusable patterns—service templates, libraries, guardrails, and default configurations—that multiple teams adopt
- Drive refactors and reliability improvements that measurably reduce recurring defects and incident volume
- Introduce data contracts, validation gates, and coordinated migrations that align shared entities and ownership
- Improve performance practices by introducing dashboards, benchmarks, and post-incident systemic fixes; coach others on effective use of AI-assisted tools
- Introduce security and privacy guardrails (secure templates, CI checks, safer defaults) that reduce recurring findings across the team
- Lead team-level planning: establish shared expectations for breakdown, sizing, and sequencing; surface risks early and keep work flowing
- Create communication norms (design/decision docs, incident comms templates) and mentoring structures (onboarding plans, buddy systems) that scale the team
- Unblock teammates on hard technical problems and advocate for scope decisions in product terms
- This position requires availability to work core business hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Arizona time, Monday through Friday
Skills
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience shipping production code
- Extensive experience designing, building, and operating production software systems at scale
- Track record of setting technical direction for a team or major system and shipping the associated outcomes
- Demonstrated ability to establish shared patterns, templates, or guardrails that other engineers adopt
- Strong system design skills—scaling patterns, reliability controls (timeouts, retries, backpressure, caching), and first-class observability
- Experience leading refactors, deprecations, or modernization efforts that reduce long-term cost of change
- Proven ability to influence engineering direction across multiple teams through writing, reviews, and coaching
- Strong cross-functional partnership skills with Product, Design, and Engineering Management
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including decision docs, design summaries, and incident follow-ups
- Alignment with StrongMind's core values: Kindness, Accountability, Collaboration, Innovation, and Grit
- Experience shaping AI-enabled or data-intensive platforms, or establishing applied AI development standards
- Deep experience with AWS or a comparable cloud and distributed systems
- Experience improving developer experience, CI/CD, or internal platform capabilities
- EdTech or mission-driven product experience
- Experience introducing privacy-by-design or secure-SDLC practices across a team
Benefits
- A competitive total compensation package, including medical, dental, vision, and voluntary benefits
- Well-being that works for real life—from an on-site gym, virtual wellness programs, and wellness coaching to flexible work options for select roles, because your well-being fuels your brilliance
- Unlimited PTO for exempt roles, plus additional “life happens” days when you need flexibility
- A fully paid holiday week off at Christmas, so you can truly rest, reset, and reconnect
- Recognition and rewards that celebrate birthdays, meaningful milestones, legendary work, and community service hours that let you give back
- Quarterly Town Halls that keep communication transparent, honest, and human
- Annual social events and traditions we genuinely look forward to—like Halloween celebrations, Wellness Fairs, and other moments that bring our community together
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