Principal Software Engineer

Rockstar is recruiting for a mission-driven nonprofit organization that empowers educators to build classrooms that respond to every student’s needs. Founded by two award-winning teachers, this organization leads a movement of educators in implementing a self-paced, mastery-based instructional model that leverages technology to foster human connection, authentic learning, and social-emotional growth. To date, the organization has reached over 70,000+ teachers through a free online course and 20,000+ teachers through a Virtual Mentorship Program from over 200 school, district, and state partners. The team is ambitious and idealistic, led by former classroom teachers, and is passionate about its work.

Why this role is needed:

For the past seven years, the organization has empowered educators to use technology more effectively. Rather than creating proprietary tech tools, the focus has been on helping teachers make better use of the tools they already have. Over time, the limitations of existing tools have become apparent, leading to the development of ideas for easy-to-use tech products that will help teachers implement self-paced, mastery-based instruction in their own classrooms. Funding has now been secured to build out a team to develop these tools.

An experienced, hands-on Principal Software Engineer is needed to transform the product vision into reality. This individual will be a foundational member of the new technical team, taking the lead on front-end and full stack web application development and creating intuitive, powerful tools that will directly support educators and students every day. In developing tech tools that solve the problems teachers face daily, there is an opportunity to make these teachers more effective, while making the evidence-based model more accessible to any educator who wants to help all of their students succeed. This role is critical to making that happen.

Key Responsibilities:

As Principal Software Engineer, this individual will be the technical lead for web application development—driving architecture, quality, accessibility, and performance for classroom-ready tools. The Principal Software Engineer will report to the Head of Engineering and collaborate closely with the Chief Innovation Officer to ship features that make a real difference for students and educators.

While the role will start out as the principal software developer working mostly independently, the plan is to build a high-quality tech team over time.

- Build new customer-facing products and features for a suite of educational technology tools.

- Develop robust, scalable, and elegant front-end and back-end systems, with a primary focus on TypeScript and modern web frameworks (Angular, Vue.js).

- Collaborate with the Head of Engineering and Chief Innovation Officer to translate user needs and product requirements into technical solutions.

- Adapt, integrate, and migrate legacy codebases into a modern unified education platform.

- Write clean, high-quality, and elegant code, adopting, establishing, and championing best practices for the engineering team.

- Contribute to the team's software and architecture, including application and infrastructure development, and deployment of core software platforms and tools.

It would also be helpful if:

- There is experience working in a startup-like environment.

- The candidate is comfortable wearing multiple hats, communicating and collaborating with non-technical stakeholders, independently balancing and managing their own work while assuming a high degree of autonomy and personal responsibility.

- Strong full-stack development skills and proficiency in deploying software, SaaS tooling and infrastructure (Cloudflare, GitHub Actions, Google Cloud, Firebase, PostHog, Railway, Temporal, Vercel) are present.

- There is experience building tech products that effectively leverage AI.

- There is experience integrating with education LMS and identity providers (Canvas, Clever, Google Classroom, Schoology, Moodle).

- There is experience structuring deterministic LLM responses through programmatic prompt and context engineering.

- There is experience implementing edtech open standards (Common Cartridge, Learning Tools Interoperability, OneRoster).

- There is experience handling sensitive and/or confidential data, particularly in an education context (COPPA, CIPA, FERPA, PPRA, SOC 2).

You should apply if:

- You are a builder with a track record of building amazing things. You welcome ideas but seek real solutions, creating prototypes to test assumptions and investing the time to ensure things work well.

- You are a front-end expert with deep experience in modern front-end web application development across multiple frameworks, and are passionate about crafting intuitive and responsive user interfaces.

- You love to learn, actively leveraging the latest developments in AI and applying them to enhance both your and others' work. You are also motivated by the organization's mission and vision, and eager to build teacher- and student-facing products.

- You are a team player with experience collaborating with vendors, contractors, and staff engineers to build products on time and within budget. You enjoy sharing your knowledge and helping your teammates grow.

- You want to shape the world, are motivated to be part of something larger than yourself, believe that the highest value of your talent is using it to empower others, and are ready to make a real difference in educators' and young people's lives.

Compensation and Benefits:

A competitive compensation package is offered, as well as the opportunity to work in a fast-growing nonprofit that is on a mission to improve education worldwide. This includes:

- Salaried Position: $150,000-$175,000 per year

- Employer-sponsored health insurance through CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield

- Participation in Vanguard 403(b) deferred-compensation plan with 3% employer match

- Paid Time Off, inclusive of: vacation/PTO (20 days), paid holidays, paid parental leave, sick and safe paid time off, "Me Days", and the ability to earn paid Comp time off

- Annual budget for organization-funded Continuous Learning for the program(s) requested (available after 6 months of continuous full-time employment)

- FSA and Dependent Care FSA access

- 1x Salary Life Insurance company-paid coverage

- Access to Wishbone Pet Insurance Benefit

- Ability to work remotely and to set own hours (within reason)

Statement of Non-Discrimination:

The organization is committed to equal employment opportunity. Discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or ethnicity is not tolerated. There is a strong commitment to hiring a diverse team and applications from traditionally under-represented backgrounds are encouraged.

(CID 2326)