Staff Software Engineer, Fullstack

Role Description

At Skylight, software engineers design, implement, and maintain software systems to improve government services for the public. This software is built to meet the needs of young adults transitioning out of the foster care system.

Skylight is partnering with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to build Fostering the Future , a platform that helps young adults aging out of foster care find the resources they need, when they need them. Co-designed with former foster youth and launching in fall 2026, the platform uses traditional resource database behavior with AI to help young adults in foster care ask the questions they don’t know to ask and access the resources they don’t know exist. You’ll work on both the user experience and the resource set that makes it valuable.

You’ll engineer the platform end-to-end: a chat-like experience that pairs LLM features with a curated knowledge base of resources for foster youth. Day to day, that means:

• Designing RAG systems, agent interactions, tuning prompts, refining embeddings, and ensuring any LLM integration is accurate, safe, and genuinely useful.

Our stack is Python (LangChain and FastAPI), Postgres with pgvector, Next.js, and embedding and chat models including Amazon Titan and Claude — but we care more about your experience optimizing LLM interactions with knowledge bases than about any specific tool.

You’ll join a small cross-functional team of researchers, designers, product managers, and engineers helping the roughly 20,000 young people who age out of foster care each year get the support they’re entitled to. This is a fast-moving, zero-to-one effort — greenfield development on a new public-facing federal platform, at national scale.

What you’ll do:

• Engineer a software product end-to-end — frontend and backend — as part of a cross-functional team.
• Design and optimize the platform’s LLM-powered features — semantic search across a knowledge base, prompt engineering, and retrieval quality.
• Build accessible, Section 508–compliant interfaces and the APIs and services behind them.
• Evaluate and improve the safety and quality of LLM interactions.
• Build secure, compliant software that meets federal security standards.
• Achieve technical excellence by advocating for lean-agile engineering practices.
• Mentor other engineers and share knowledge to strengthen the team’s engineering practice.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and improving RAG based LLM systems including semantic search.
• Experience designing multiple LLM/agent interactions to search and refine data sets.
• Experience using LLMs to aggregate, refine, and review data sets.
• Strong prompt improvement skills and understanding of LLM patterns that work.
• Ability to write clean, working, and reusable code.
• Can produce high-quality code by adhering to good practices such as automated testing.
• Familiar with how to build secure, compliant software and defend against common vulnerabilities.
• Possess a foundational understanding of data engineering.
• Understand the different pieces of software systems and how to fit them together.
• Understand the importance of always putting users at the center of your work.
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery.
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values.

Requirements

• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories.
• You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
• You must be able to obtain a public trust clearance.
• You must complete a company background check successfully.

Benefits

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance.
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Life and AD&D insurance.
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account.
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period.
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays.
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents.
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options.
• Business development / sales bonuses.
• Referral bonuses.
• Annual $2000 allowance for professional development.
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases.
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise.
• Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year.
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment.
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good.