Staff Software Engineer, Extensibility and Integration

Role Description

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Extensibility and Integrations team. In this pivotal role, you'll provide technical leadership for multi-quarter initiatives in the dynamic world of digital fundraising — enabling fundraising administrators to seamlessly integrate and manage contribution data across their diverse toolsets.

• Architect and lead database modernization efforts, optimizing large-scale systems for efficiency and reliability while safeguarding sensitive donor information through advanced data management and retention strategies.
• Lead the design and implementation of scalable data solutions and robust APIs, ensuring seamless data integration, high availability, and alignment with business goals for peak performance during critical fundraising moments.
• Lead the technical execution of large, cross-team initiatives, working with multiple engineers to design and implement solutions that balance high-impact opportunities with effort, scope, and technical tradeoffs.
• Break down initiative-level work across multiple epics and contribute technical expertise to shape the team's roadmap prioritization.
• Proactively tackle database performance, refining schemas and enhancing data retrieval processes while creating strategic integrations for vendor APIs for improved system interconnectivity.
• Serve as a technical consultant and go-to resource for engineers across teams on complex architectural decisions, system design, and best practices — particularly around extensibility, integrations, and data exchange.
• Advocate for comprehensive monitoring systems and software quality standards, implementing best practices that anticipate and accommodate future scalability and maintenance needs.
• Recognize the importance of addressing tech debt head-on. Your proactive approach will ensure our systems remain agile and adaptable, setting us up for future success.
• Demonstrate technical leadership through writing documentation, establishing effective testing and monitoring, and fostering clear and audience-oriented communication.
• Coach and mentor engineers on your team, creating professional development opportunities and partnering with engineering managers to find sponsorship and growth opportunities for your colleagues.
• Model effective feedback in code reviews, explaining the "why" in a way that's easily understood, and create spaces for individuals to be engaged, valued, and heard.

Qualifications

• 6-8 years of relevant professional experience, with demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership for multi-quarter initiatives involving complex requirements, strategic thinking, and cross-team collaboration.
• Significant experience in developing and maintaining large monolithic server-side web applications, including making changes to APIs to carry features to completion.
• Broad understanding of a spectrum of stacks; expert understanding of dependencies, needs, impacts, and risks across technical areas within a domain.
• Deep understanding of performance, scalability, and security best practices, with the ability to recommend system-level improvements to mitigate concerns for broad systems.
• Experience designing and integrating with third-party APIs and building extensible systems that support diverse downstream toolsets and data consumers.
• Experience designing frameworks to enable a culture of defensive testing; consistently debugging the toughest issues throughout the stack regardless of environment, finding root cause or viable workarounds.
• A track record of effective collaboration with engineers to develop abstractions and patterns that make it easy to build reliable software.
• Eagerness to explore and refactor legacy code — bringing an empathetic but forward-thinking approach to working in an older codebase.
• Ability to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders and to collaboratively translate business requirements and strategic goals into technical solutions.
• Experience coaching engineers on coaching and mentoring others; fostering a culture of delivering specific praise and constructive feedback.
• Can provide support and stability during times of urgency; contributes holistic solutions in post-mortems.
• An inclusive, generous working style: you like to mentor, collaborate, and elevate your team by supporting your peers.

Requirements

• Frontend Development: JavaScript and TypeScript with React.
• Backend Development: Ruby on Rails, with SQL via PostgreSQL for database management, Node.js.
• Data Management: REST and GraphQL for API queries, Sidekiq for background job processing.
• Development Tools: TypeScript for static type checking, Yarn + Webpack for managing dependencies and builds, ESLint/Prettier for code quality control.
• Infrastructure and Monitoring: Application Hosting: Heroku for deploying, Kubernetes for container orchestration.
• Monitoring and Error Tracking: Datadog for system monitoring, Bugsnag for error detection.
• Data Analytics and Reporting: Mixpanel for tracking user interactions, Looker for data analysis powered by SQL/PSQL for in-depth PostgreSQL querying.

Benefits

• Flexible work schedules and an unlimited time-off policy.
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families; plus fully-paid health reimbursement arrangement to use for out of pocket expenses and fully-paid short- and long-term disability.
• Fully paid basic and AD&D life insurance and a voluntary supplemental life insurance option.
• Dependent and health care flexible spending account options.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits for employees.
• Automatic 2% Employer-paid 401K contribution, plus up to an additional 6% match on employee contributions.
• A minimum of three months paid medical, family and parental leave (for all new parents, adoptions included).
• Commuter or home-office benefits, including a $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees.
• Additional perks including quarterly snack deliveries and digital subscriptions to the Boston Globe & New York Times.