Integration Lead

About the role

Stellic is scaling its mission to provide every student with a clear, confident path through higher education, and this role is central to that ambition. As Integration Lead, you will own the systems that connect university Student Information Systems to Stellic, ensuring data correctness and reliability across the product. You will define and drive a new integration standard that replaces legacy patterns with a scalable, consistent architecture. You will lead the technical direction of SIS integration pipelines, data models, and external interfaces end to end. This position requires deep expertise in designing fault-tolerant, observable systems that maintain integrity across heterogeneous data sources. You will mentor engineers on best practices and elevate the quality of code and design across the integration team. Your work will directly impact the trustworthiness of the platform used by over 1 million students across 7 countries. You will collaborate closely with product, design, and customer-facing teams to translate complex external systems into coherent internal representations.

Key facts

What you'll do

• SIS integration systems, end to end: Own the technical direction and evolution of the systems that bridge university Student Information Systems and Stellic - including integration pipelines, data models, and the interfaces that expose external data across the product.
• A new integration standard: Define and drive the adoption of a consolidated integration architecture, replacing multiple legacy patterns with a consistent, scalable approach that will support Stellic's next phase of growth.
• Data correctness and reliability: Ensure systems are fault-tolerant, observable, and easy to debug, with clear guarantees around data integrity and behavior across a wide range of heterogeneous external data sources.
• External system complexity: Design systems that reliably handle varied SIS environments while maintaining clean, well-defined internal representations the rest of the product can depend on.
• Engineering excellence: Drive engineering excellence by defining and mentoring on best practices, design patterns, and code quality across the integration team.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with product, design, and customer-facing teams to understand requirements and translate them into robust integration solutions.
• Standards and patterns: Evolve integration standards and patterns to align with product roadmap and long-term scalability goals.
• Observability and debugging: Build observability into integration pipelines to enable fast diagnosis and resolution of data issues in production.
• Data modeling: Design and maintain data models that accurately represent university structures and student journeys across multiple countries.
• Performance and scale: Optimize integration pipelines for performance and reliability as data volume and university partnerships grow.
• Process improvement: Identify bottlenecks in integration workflows and implement improvements to increase team efficiency and system resilience.
• Technical leadership: Provide clear technical direction and decision-making for the integration stack, balancing short-term needs with long-term architecture.
• Quality assurance: Ensure integration changes are reliable and well-tested, reducing risk for downstream product features.
• Documentation: Maintain up-to-date documentation for integration designs, interfaces, and operational procedures.
• Mentorship: Guide engineers on the team in integration best practices, code quality, and system design.
• Collaboration: Partner with engineering and product teams to prioritize integration work in line with business objectives.
• Ownership: Take end-to-end ownership of integration initiatives from discovery through production deployment and post-launch monitoring.
• Adaptability: Navigate ambiguity and rapidly adjust integration strategies as university systems and product requirements evolve.
• Customer empathy: Ensure integration decisions reflect the needs of students, academic advisors, and university partners.

Requirements

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience operating at scale, with a track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead.
• Background designing and operating high-reliability integration systems with strong guarantees around data correctness.
• Expertise building fault-tolerant, observable systems that are easy to debug in production.
• Experience working with complex external systems and translating them into clean, well-defined internal models.
• Strong judgment in defining and evolving integration standards and patterns across a codebase.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and database optimization, with PostgreSQL as a plus.
• Comfort with asynchronous / event-based architectures.
• Clear and effective communication skills for collaborating with product, design, and customer-facing teams.
• Deep curiosity, customer empathy, and commitment to engineering as a craft.

Practical notes

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