Job Details

Software Engineer - Full Stack (Data/Platform Heavy, Senior Level)

Avela is a Nobel Prize winning platform for families to navigate their child's educational journey. Parents can find, apply, register, and pay for school and programs for their children, all from a common application system with saved profiles. Avela also powers backend admissions and operational workflows, making it easy for schools, districts, and educational providers to equitably serve students.

Role

We're seeking an experienced Full Stack Software Engineer to help expand our platform and enhance user experience. As a startup a core requirement of every role is the ability and willingness to dive in and attack anything across the stack and that is absolutely part of this role. That said, no one is an expert in everything and for this role we're looking for someone who is most comfortable and experienced with data pipelines and cloud platform technologies and looking to spend the majority of their time helping to build out our data integrations, pipelines and building the foundations of the long term Avela data platform. Reporting directly to the CTO, you'll have an opportunity to influence the vision of the product and culture we are creating together. Given the impact of this role we're looking for senior developers with at least 5 years of full-time professional software development experience.

Location

We're a semi-remote company with hubs in San Francisco and Boston. The San Francisco hub includes the CEO and Engineering Lead, so we strongly prefer candidates living in the SF Bay Area to facilitate in-person collaboration and social connection.

Note on Titles

At Avela, we eschew corporate hierarchy and the traditional titles that go with them. All of our software engineers have the same title and we index levels and corresponding compensation to responsibilities and experience.

Responsibilities

• Work with the team to guide the design, development, and execution of the next generation of the Avela data platform that deftly balances short term needs with concrete phases that build towards our future vision.
• Be a product engineer - we all care deeply about the product experience and collaborate to build our roadmap and brainstorm ideas.
• Help build how we build - as an early stage startup our processes are constantly evolving to meet our needs. Culture and developer experience take intentional thought and work and everyone is involved.
• Dig in with our customers - everyone is part of customer success. If a customer is having issues engineering is always there to solve technical issues.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full time experience building data pipelines with a specific emphasis on integrating with external software and systems and APIs
• Extensive experience in data modeling (bonus points for experience in highly configurable data models)
• Previous experience building real time data pipelines including strategies for dynamic data mapping and validation
• Startup or greenfield project experience
• Passion for education, equity, or social impact
• Entrepreneurial spirit and drive
• Growth mindset and desire to constantly improve
• Legal ability to work in the US, based in the USA.

Compensation

$150,000 - $185,000 a year. We also offer generous equity and a competitive benefits package.

Benefits

We love our team and care about their wellness. We strive to offer the best benefits of our peers, including:

• Significant equity
• Flexible work policies
• Unlimited vacation
• Home office stipend or WeWork membership
• 401(k) program
• Flexible Savings Account (FSA)
• Dependent Care Saving Plan (DCFSA)
• Commuter Benefits
• Life Insurance by Guardian (covered 100%)
• Platinum Medical Plan by UnitedHealthcare (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)
• Platinum Dental Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)
• Platinum Vision Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

Location

We'd like to ensure colleagues have an opportunity to connect with each other regularly, and that teams have a few days to work together onsite each month. So we are only hiring candidates for most roles who live within one of our two hubs:

• San Francisco Bay Area - Office Downtown SOMA, San Francisco, CA
• Greater Boston - Office in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA

Please review the specific job description carefully, as each role might have its own unique geographic requirements. For example, some roles might only hire in one hub where the hiring manager is located, and other roles might benefit from geographic distribution and support hiring outside of hubs (e.g. sales).

Outside of our occasional collaboration and social gatherings, we offer a flexible, work-from-home culture. We trust our employees to work from wherever they are most productive and comfortable for most of the time, as long as it is private with high speed internet. We hope this offers the best of both worlds - the flexibility to work remotely most of the time (far more than a hybrid model), but still the benefits of in-person collaboration and socialization.

Just like we believe in the value of finding the right school for each child, we want to help candidates find the right company. To help you evaluate if Avela is the right fit, we want to be transparent about our evolving company culture and approach to onsite collaboration. You can read more this Community Hub Model and our collaboration norms here.

Work Authorization

Although we are strongly supportive of immigrants and individuals of all backgrounds, unfortunately, as a small startup, we are not in a position to sponsor visas and are only able to consider candidates who are authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to working together in the future.

We Encourage You To Apply

Avela is a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We strongly encourage you to apply if you are from a marginalized or underrepresented group, even if you don't meet all of the job requirements. If you believe this is a role that you'll be excited to work in every day, want to be a part of a culture like ours, and will be relentless about pushing boundaries to succeed, please apply.

Tech Stack (for Product/Engineering Roles):

Experience with our specific technologies is not required, even for engineering roles, and our stack is constantly evolving. Here's what we're using now:

• Front-end: React + TypeScript, Chakra UI with focus on a11y, Jest + React Testing Library for unit tests, Playwright for end-to-end tests
• Back-end + Database: GraphQL with Hasura, AWS Lambda with NodeJS / TypeScript and Go, AWS Serverless Services: Fargate, Aurora, S3, SNS, AWS RDS with PostgreSQL
• DevOps: AWS CDK for Infrastructure as Code, AWS CodeBuild and AWS Codepipeline, AWS Amplify for Front-End