Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Stellic is building a future where every student can move through their education with clarity, confidence, and purpose. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will own feature delivery end-to-end, leading impactful projects from scoping through release to directly change how students and advisors experience the platform. You will hold the bar high on testing, security, accessibility, and the practices that keep a codebase healthy as it scales to serve millions of students. You will partner closely with Product and Design to ensure what gets built solves the right problems and stays close to customer outcomes. Additionally, you will mentor junior engineers by sharing context, giving direct feedback, and modeling strong engineering habits. Finally, you will contribute to broader engineering initiatives that improve scalability, operational efficiency, and how the team ships high-quality software.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead feature delivery end-to-end by scoping, planning, and shipping new capabilities that transform the student and advisor experience.
• Set and uphold rigorous standards for code quality, testing, security, and accessibility to ensure a healthy and scalable codebase.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product and Design to validate problem-solution fit and stay focused on measurable customer outcomes.
• Mentor junior engineers through direct feedback, context sharing, and modeling strong engineering practices that drive ownership.
• Drive engineering initiatives that improve scalability, operational efficiency, and the overall effectiveness of the shipping process.
• Architect and implement solutions within the search and AI-driven capabilities that power critical user and internal workflows.
• Take ownership of systems that enable academic planning, degree pathways, scheduling, and registration to ensure a seamless student journey.
• Build and maintain the critical integration layer between university Student Information Systems and Stellic to keep data accurate and trustworthy.
• Contribute to the evolution of Explore, the newest product focused on helping prospective and transfer students plan their academic pathways.
• Support the Care product by building software for academic advisors that unites student support data into a shared profile for timely outreach.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code across front-end and back-end stacks to support long-term product stability.
• Partner with data and infrastructure teams to optimize database performance and reliability across PostgreSQL and ElasticSearch.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response to ensure high availability and quick resolution of production issues.
• Continuously learn and adapt to new technologies while helping the team evaluate and adopt tools that improve velocity.
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with a proven ability to deliver production-grade software.
• Strong fundamentals across front-end and/or back-end development, with a focus on how you think and build rather than a specific stack.
• Experience shipping production software in a collaborative, fast-moving environment where priorities can shift quickly.
• Demonstrated skill with testing strategies and CI/CD pipelines to maintain code quality at scale.
• Comfort working cross-functionally with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to align on goals and execution.
• A track record of taking projects from initial idea through to measurable outcomes and feeling accountable for the final result.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable code and review peer contributions with a focus on long-term health of the codebase.
• Willingness to mentor more junior engineers by providing guidance, direct feedback, and leading by example.

Nice to have

• Experience with Python, SQL, Django, and modern JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, or Remix.
• Familiarity with search technologies and AI-driven features that enhance student decision-making.
• Background in academic or education technology domains and understanding of student information systems.
• Experience contributing to open source or public-facing projects that demonstrate engineering communication.

Practical notes

This role is full-time and based in San Mateo, California, with hybrid in-office expectations. Remote arrangements are considered on a case-by-case basis within the United States. There may be travel required to support university partners and stakeholders as needed. Employment is contingent on successful completion of applicable background checks and authorization to work in the United States.