Senior Software Engineer, Platform

Learning Commons aims to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner by building AI infrastructure that better connects the way students learn to the tools they learn with. The Team At Learning Commons, we pair technology with grantmaking to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner. We aim to translate what learning science tells us about how students learn best into classroom practice. With the advent of generative AI, that translation work can be accelerated and scaled to have a greater impact. Our mission is to bring learning science into the tools used every day by teachers and students, ensuring that technology reflects the realities of classrooms and strengthens teaching and learning. In today’s fragmented edtech landscape, school districts are often left piecing together products that don’t always align with curricula or instructional needs. While AI holds enormous potential to support educators, it can only deliver on that promise when grounded in research, high-quality educational data, and expert evaluation. That’s why we’re building open, public-purpose infrastructure – datasets, rubrics, and resources – that help raise the standard for educational tools and create more consistent, impactful learning experiences for all students and teachers. At our core, we are builders, and our unique builder philanthropy approach is what sets us apart from other education funders. Take a closer look at the highlights and significant milestones of CZI’s first eight years of education work. The Opportunity We are seeking a strong Senior Software Engineer with deep infrastructure experience to help build and scale the systems that power our Learning Commons platform and AI-enabled educational tools. This role offers the opportunity to work across the stack – from backend services and APIs to cloud infrastructure and CI/CD – ensuring our systems are reliable, secure, and easy for engineers to build upon. As a Senior Software Engineer on the Education Tech engineering team, you’ll play a key role in designing and implementing production-grade systems that support experimental educational applications and AI developer tooling. You’ll partner closely with product, data, and platform engineers to improve system performance, strengthen observability, and streamline developer workflows. This is a high‑impact individual contributor role where you’ll own meaningful technical initiatives within the team – improving reliability, scaling services, and enhancing the developer experience through thoughtful engineering. You’ll collaborate with Trust, Security, and product engineering teams to ensure our infrastructure aligns with best practices while remaining pragmatic for a fast‑moving, early‑stage environment. If you’re passionate about building robust systems, improving developer velocity, and working on technology that supports educators and students, we’d love to connect. What You’ll Do Build Across the Stack – Design and implement scalable backend services, APIs, and infrastructure that power our Learning Commons platform and AI‑enabled tools. Strengthen Cloud & DevOps Foundations – Improve cloud infrastructure, data pipelines, CI/CD workflows, and deployment automation to increase reliability and developer velocity. Own Reliability & Performance – Enhance observability, monitoring, and incident response practices; debug and resolve production issues across application and infrastructure layers. Improve Scalability & Developer Experience – Identify bottlenecks and drive pragmatic improvements that make systems faster, safer, and easier to build on. Collaborate & Raise the Bar – Partner with product, data, security, and platform teams; contribute to design discussions, code reviews, and shared engineering standards. What You’ll Bring Strong Engineering Fundamentals – Proven experience building and operating production systems in cloud‑native environments. Infrastructure & DevOps Depth – Hands‑on experience with infrastructure as code, containerized systems, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud architecture. Modern Tooling Fluency – Experience with tools such as Terraform, Helm, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Grafana, Databricks (or comparable technologies). Operational Excellence Mindset – Experience with observability, monitoring, and incident response; comfortable debugging complex distributed systems. Systems Thinking – Solid understanding of scalability, networking, and secure system design, with pragmatic decision‑making in fast‑moving environments. Collaborative Communication – Ability to contribute to technical design discussions, align cross‑functionally, and elevate engineering standards within a team. Compensation The Redwood City, CA base pay range for a new hire in this role is $190,000 - $261,800. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job‑related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. Better Together As we grow, we’re excited to strengthen in‑person connections and cultivate a collaborative, team‑oriented environment. This role is a hybrid position requiring you to be onsite for at least 60% of the working month, approximately 3 days a week, with specific in‑office days determined by the team’s manager. The exact schedule will be at the hiring manager’s discretion and communicated during the interview process. Benefits for the Whole You Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future. Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving Reasonable Accommodation Notice The organization provides (and state and federal law requires) reasonable accommodations to be provided to qualified applicants with disabilities. Your recruiter will work with you during the interview process should you require any such accommodations. Examples of reasonable accommodation include making a change to the application process or work procedures, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment. Background Check Notice As part of our hiring process, all offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you will be required to undergo a background check prior to employment. Voluntary Self Identification For reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self‑identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in the organization’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. 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