Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer (Rails, Typescript)
Published on December 18, 2022
CommonLit is a nonprofit EdTech organization dedicated to providing high-quality literacy instruction to low-income students and students of color to prepare them for success in college and careers. We operate a free online reading and writing program, www.commonlit.org, that is used by millions of teachers and students worldwide monthly. We are a quickly growing team of passionate professionals - many of whom are former teachers. Our team is now almost 100 full-time employees spread across ~20 states.
Our small (nine-member) engineering team works in a collaborative, high-trust environment where we ship high-quality software to power CommonLit's curriculum and to assist teachers in assessing their students' growth. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll lead significant technical projects, contribute your own code, review teammates' work, and advance CommonLit's mission.
You'll act as a force multiplier for your teammates' work in addition to your own high-leverage contributions.
Our team is a group of life-long learners. We value sharing new ideas, lifting each other up, and building performant, reliable software that teachers can rely on in the high-stress classroom environment.
The Interview Process
Interviewing is a demand on your time. Here's what you can expect from our interview process:
- A call with a senior engineer to talk about your experience and learn about CommonLit
- A 45-60 minute technical interview over Zoom with two engineers (we rotate the interviewers and change members of the pair to ensure consistent leveling of expectations)
- Finalists will be invited for a ~4-hour final interview including pairing with CommonLit engineers, an architecture discussion, and meeting our Product team
Location
CommonLit's engineering team is distributed. Due to restrictions on data access, you must work from within the United States. We have an office in Washington, DC that you can work from if you're in the area, but most of our team is spread out around the country.
Responsibilities
- Writing high-quality Ruby and Typescript code and tests for our Ruby on Rails monolith
- Reviewing your teammates' work in our code review workflow
- Researching technical ideas for upcoming projects
- Mentoring and helping level-up less experienced engineers on the team
- Assisting the CTO with longer-term efforts
- Deploying and operating our application in production
Qualifications
- 5-8+ years of web development experience with some of that time spent on a Ruby on Rails production application
- Experience working with a modern JavaScript framework (React, Vue, etc.)
- Ability to work comfortably in SQL (we use PostgreSQL and Redshift)
- Experience dealing with performance and scaling issues
- You live in (and will be working from) the United States and have work authorization
- You have a commitment to improving equity of opportunity for students of color
Pay
- Minimum salary $150,000 to maximum salary of $210,000.
- (Voluntary) on-call weeks include a stipend
As an equal opportunity employer, CommonLit values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon their race, traits historically associated with race, religion, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy or related medical conditions, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics. If you are a qualified applicant requiring assistance or an accommodation to complete any step of the application process due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected]