Senior Product Engineer

Own the whole product. Grow into the person who leads it. Level: Senior, VP of Product track About the role We're looking for a senior engineer who's ready to own product development, from designing to building to rapidly iterating. We're a small, venture-backed team building the platform that connects high school students to near-peer coaches, curriculum, and the tools they need to figure out what comes after graduation. You'll be our first senior engineering hire, working directly with the founders as the technical owner of everything we build. This role is designed for engineers who are obsessed with building, eager to learn from feedback, and quick to take initiative. You'll work cross-functionally to improve product workflows across user groups, from students and school staff to CC coaches and program managers. We're looking for someone who loves to build, takes initiative, and sees feedback as opportunity. Ideally, you're also excited to become a product leader who will oversee a growing engineering team. What this looks like in practice You analyze feedback from platform analytics, user reports, and team members to identify and prioritize areas for improvement. You define requirements, break down the work, and manage your own scope. You make design and UX decisions, getting feedback from the founders and users to inform your decisions. You write the code, write the tests, run the deploys, and own what happens in production. You talk to users. You'll sit in on school check-ins and coach calls, and what you hear shapes what you build next. You communicate progress, decisions, and trade-offs directly to the founders and, when it matters, to school partners. You use AI tools to the fullest. Engagement with Claude Code, Cursor, or other solutions is encouraged and will be a standard part of how you plan, build, and document. This role is probably not for you if you do your best work inside clearly defined tickets, or if you prefer deep specialization over broad ownership. It might be exactly for you if you're bored by predictable workflows and an endless stream of tickets coming down from your PM. Where this role is headed This is a senior individual-contributor role today, and a leadership role as we grow. The person we hire is the person we expect to become a key product leader as we grow our engineering team. We would love to see this person grow into a VP of Product role. In the first year, that means owning the technical roadmap and architecture, setting the engineering standards the next hires will follow, and being the voice of the product in founder-level decisions. As the team grows, it means hiring and leading engineers, and taking formal ownership of product and engineering. We're explicit about this because we want someone who wants it: who is energized by building a team and a product, not just a codebase, and who is ready to be accountable for both. The stack React web app and React Native mobile app MySQL AWS Integrations with school data systems (SIS rosters, district SSO) AI tools (Claude, Cursor) in the day-to-day workflow What you bring 3+ years of production engineering experience, including real end-to-end ownership of features from ambiguous problem to shipped and adopted Solid AWS, SQL, and production-operations experience: deploys, monitoring, incidents, and the unglamorous work of keeping a product reliable You define requirements from a problem statement; you don't wait for a spec Product and UX judgment: you can look at a screen and know what a 16-year-old or an overworked counselor will do with it Strong written communication. Specs, release notes, and documentation are part of how you deliver, and so are clear updates to non-technical school partners Comfort with a small team and a fast pace: you'll wear a lot of hats and face ambiguity. That should energize you, not bring you down. Interest in leading. You want to hire, mentor, and set direction, not only write code Nice to have Experience as an early or founding engineer at a startup Experience with student data privacy (FERPA, COPPA) and educational data standards (Ed-Fi, OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink) Background in ed-tech, college access, career readiness, or workforce development Experience building AI-powered product features Spanish fluency About College Contact College Contact bridges the gap between student potential and district accountability. We partner with school districts nationwide to help students explore and pursue meaningful futures through college, career, and military readiness curriculum, technology, and 1:1 coaching from certified near-peer mentors. By combining practical resources with meaningful human support, we help students complete critical milestones, follow through on their goals, and help districts meet state CCMR requirements and accountability targets. We're an Austin-based, venture-backed C corp, a Techstars company, founded by two co-founders who started it as undergrads. We're small, we move fast, and the people we hire now will shape what the company becomes. Compensation, benefits, and logistics $100,000–$150,000 base + equity This is a founding-engineer-level role with a leadership trajectory 100% health coverage Based in Austin, TX, with 3–5 days a week in the office Applicants must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship A Blue Suit (if you know...you know!) Equal Opportunity Employer College Contact is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment decisions, including hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination, are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. #J-18808-Ljbffr College Contact, Inc.