Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer

Our vision is that every student, regardless of their circumstances or background, has the opportunity to set and realize an ambitious dream for themselves. Our mission is to re-imagine learning so it's student centered, enabling students to succeed in school and life. Espark provides standards-based games, videos, and digital activities, students work independently to succeed at their own level and pace.

As Senior Software Engineer, you'll join our team of generalists and report to the Director of Engineering and be directly responsible for making the lives of teachers, students, and neighboring eSpark teams better through the software you ship. We believe that excitement to learn, a readiness to work together collaboratively, and good technical fundamentals are more important to success at eSpark than past experience with specific technologies — we are always ready to pair and to train new engineers on the technologies we use.

The applications our students and teachers use are built with Elm and Typescript on the frontend and Ruby on Rails on the backend (all covered by tests), running on top of Docker and with data stored in MySQL and Redshift. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll focus on three areas:

• Delivery Plan and build impactful and substantial new features and systems
• Making our product more resilient in low-bandwidth environments (which often affect low-income students)
• Refactoring new and existing features in response to user feedback and metrics
• Working closely with design and product to refine and scope the product specs in the discovery research phase where we talk directly with users
• Making good use of your autonomy to pay down technical debt, create new internal tools, and make for happier developer experiences
• Improving how we adapt each student's learning needs and styles dynamically to keep them on track
• Building better tools for teachers to measure outcomes for small group or individual tutoring and help students where most needed
• Scoping and creating ways to inform and engage parents in their students' learning at the right moments (and without requiring significant time commitments parents might not be able to make)
• Addressing obstacles proactively so the team maintains a predictable and sustainable pace

People: Mentor other members of the engineering team to help them grow as engineers and as people. Be a positive role model who your peers want to continue working with. Provide perspective on team practices. Help source and interview candidates to grow a talented, collaborative, ego-free team.

Technical Strategy: Participate in collaborative, sound technical decision-making by the engineering team. Tell the "story" of the engineering team, connecting its work to the larger mission of the company. Understand how technology reflects and amplifies biases and power structures to guide decisions so that our products are safe and equitable for our students and teachers.

In addition to a competitive salary and stock options, eSpark offers full healthcare coverage (including vision, dental, and mental health benefits), generous vacation and parental leave policies, flexible work-from-home and remote work options as well as a welcoming (post-pandemic) office environment and your choice of technical equipment. We believe in work-life balance and respect nights and weekends (one advantage of working with schools is their regular hours!).

At eSpark, we believe all people—adults and students alike—deserve respect for who they are. We work hard to make eSpark an environment in which everyone can thrive and succeed. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.