---
title: 'Platform Lead at Stellic'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/platform-lead-stellic-san-mateo-rkp8cv8x9cwh'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Platform Lead at Stellic

- **Company:** Stellic
- **Location:** San Mateo, CA
- **Compensation:** $235k–$275k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-05-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/stellic/f284a871-901c-431a-8651-cb21c484ceec/application

**Skills:** Backend Engineering, Scalable AI Platforms, ElasticSearch, Search Infrastructure, Observable Systems, Event-based Architectures, API Design, Python, SQL, Django, Angular, React, Remix, PostgreSQL, Git, AWS, GitHub, Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus

> The Platform Lead owns the technical direction of Stellic's search infrastructure and AI platform, designing shared primitives and ensuring engineering excellence. This role involves leading complex implementations, establishing best practices, and collaborating with product leadership to shape the future of higher...

## Job description

Stellic is growing! We're looking for a Platform Lead to own the technical direction of the systems at the center of our architecture. We're investing heavily in AI capabilities, search infrastructure, and shared platform primitives — and we need a technical leader who can shape both what we build and how teams across engineering build on top of it.

## ABOUT US

We're building a future where every student can move through their education with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Our platform transforms the student experience, giving them the tools they need to make the right decisions about their degree plans, track their journey, and build an education and career path that's truly their own. Stellic is a fast-growing startup backed by leading social impact investors, partnering with top institutions like Cornell, Columbia, UVA, and Ohio State to support over 1 million students across 7 countries. As we scale to serve more universities worldwide, we remain deeply committed to this mission, driven by our values, and committed to building a high-performance team that's here to make a lasting difference on both students' lives and higher education.

## STELLIC ENGINEERS

Stellic engineers combine a rare blend of curiosity, creativity, and business acumen with the ability to deliver pragmatic solutions at high velocity with uncompromising quality. Our mission is to help students, and our engineers always have that in mind as they are building.

## THE PLATFORM TEAM

The Platform team is responsible for building both foundational infrastructure and key product surfaces that power Stellic's core experiences. The team owns critical systems such as search, which underpins much of the user experience, as well as a growing set of AI-driven capabilities, including AI Analytics and the AI platform. These systems span both end-user-facing features and internal building blocks used across the product. In addition to owning features end-to-end, the team develops shared primitives such as workflow infrastructure and AI systems used broadly across engineering. The team is currently focused on improving the reliability and scalability of these systems, while continuing to build new capabilities that expand what's possible across the product. As a technical lead on Platform, your work will have broad impact across teams and the overall product, shaping both the systems we build and how other teams build on top of them.

## ABOUT YOU

You've built scalable AI platforms and ElasticSearch-powered search systems at scale, and you understand what it means to create infrastructure that other teams actually want to build on. You think carefully about abstractions and interfaces, hold a high bar for quality across shared systems, and bring genuine ownership to everything — from architecture decisions down to code review.

## AS OUR PLATFORM LEAD, YOU WILL OWN

- Search and AI platform: Own the technical direction and evolution of Stellic's search infrastructure and AI platform — from end-user features like search and AI Analytics to the internal systems teams use to build AI-powered capabilities across the product.
- Shared platform primitives: Design and evolve shared building blocks — including workflow infrastructure and AI systems — used broadly across engineering. Your decisions shape how other teams build.
- Quality of shared systems: Own consistency and quality across shared systems that have broad usage and impact across engineering. Establish clear patterns and abstractions that enable other teams to build on platform capabilities effectively.
- Technical prioritization: Partner on prioritization of engineering-driven and product priorities, acting as a true peer to product leadership.
- Engineering excellence: Drive engineering excellence by defining and mentoring on best practices, design patterns, and code quality across the team.

## TO BE SUCCESSFUL, YOU SHOULD HAVE

- 8+ years of backend engineering experience operating at scale, with a track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead
- Expertise building scalable AI platforms that enable product teams to develop AI-powered features
- Experience designing and maintaining ElasticSearch-powered search platforms at scale
- Expertise building observable, testable systems at scale — you think about reliability and debuggability from the start
- Strong ownership mindset and the ability to autonomously lead and drive complex implementations end-to-end
- Experience with asynchronous / event-based architectures and strong API design skills
- Clear and effective communication skills for collaborating with product, design, and customer-facing teams
- Deep curiosity, customer empathy, and commitment to engineering as a craft — and a desire to mentor junior developers

## OUR CURRENT TECH STACK

While we plan on introducing new technologies and capabilities, and potentially migrating away from current ones, here is the general shape of our current stack:

- Languages: Python, SQL
- Frameworks: Django, Angular, React, Remix
- Databases: PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Redis
- Version control: Git (GitHub)
- Cloud: AWS
- Deployment: AWS CodeDeploy
- Observability & Analytics: Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus, PostHog, Metabase
- Both single and multi-tenant architecture

## WHY YOU'LL LOVE WORKING AT STELLIC

- Shape the future of higher education at a company leading the transformation of student success.
- Work alongside an ambitious, mission-driven leadership team building something meaningful.
- Own a piece of the journey with competitive salary, meaningful equity and a culture of excellence, speed and ownership.
- Thrive in a flexible, outcome-driven culture built on trust and autonomy.
- Exceptional benefits, including health insurance with Stellic covering 99% of your premium and 75% for dependents.
- 401(k), commuter benefits, and annual international retreats in incredible locations.

Stellic is an Equal Opportunity Employer Our company values diversity and believes diverse teams make innovation possible. We encourage all qualified applicants from any race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or other characteristics to apply.

## About Stellic

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Stellic provides a degree management and student success platform that helps higher education institutions guide students from enrollment to graduation.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage, $13M total funding raised)
- **Headquarters**: San Mateo, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Not publicly named, but founded by former college students who partnered with advisor Mark Stehlik (after whom the platform is named)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Education Technology (EdTech) / Higher Education SaaS
- **Target customers**: Higher education institutions (universities, colleges) — B2B, selling to administrators and advisors
- **Mission or purpose**: "Make the most out of every student’s education" and "Set students’ lives on a trajectory they’ll be proud of"

## Products & Services
- **Degree Audit**: Gives students a complete understanding of where they stand on the path to graduation.
- **Planner**: Lets students choose, chart, and change the courses they plan to take within a single workspace.
- **Progress Tracking**: Visualizes each student's past, present, and future academic journey.
- **Transfer Rules Management**: Create and maintain transfer rules so students can move forward without retracing steps.
- **Transcript OCR**: Automates transcript processing to eliminate manual data entry.
- **Pathways**: Shows incoming students what degree paths best match their goals and existing credits; also shows how education could unfold across different programs or timelines.
- **Reporting and Alerts**: Gives advisors the ability to act early when students seem at risk of falling behind.
- **Appointments**: Makes scheduling sessions with students more efficient for advisors.
- **Notes**: Central hub for logging insights about each student, keeping the support network informed.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: $13M total funding raised (from impact-first investors) [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Raised from "impact-first investors" (specific names not publicly listed)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Over 1 million students supported as of the latest data [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/)
  - Used by over 90 higher education institutions worldwide [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)
  - 2x year-over-year growth [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - 111+ countries represented among users [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/about)
  - 92 total employees [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founder-market fit**: Built by former college students who experienced the problem firsthand, partnered with an advisor who understood institutional needs.
- **Platform named after advisor Mark Stehlik** — the product was co-created with someone who deeply understood both student and administrative pain points.
- **Accessibility certified** and protects student privacy (FERPA compliance implied) [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/)
- **Integrated platform** that serves students, advisors, and administrators in one system — reducing reliance on "patchwork of disconnected tools" [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/about)
- **Strong mission-driven brand**: "Innovation for students, by (former) students" [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)

## Strategic Focus
- **Expanding institutional reach**: Growing from 90+ institutions toward broader adoption across higher education.
- **Deepening the platform**: Continuing to build out tools for degree planning, transfer management, and student success analytics.
- **International growth**: Serving users from 111+ countries indicates global ambition.
- **Data-driven insights**: Emphasis on "Reporting and Alerts" and "Insights" suggests analytics and predictive capabilities are a priority.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as mission-driven with values including "You are a true student" (curiosity/learning), "You own the mission" (outcome-focused), "You drive for 10x" (ambition), and "You lead with heart" (empathy) [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
- **Work environment**: Hybrid — San Mateo office encourages in-office Tuesdays and Thursdays; Karachi office encourages Mondays and Thursdays. Flexible policy overall [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)
- **Perks**:
  - 99% covered health, dental, and vision insurance [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - 401(k) and IRA plans [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - Market-aligned compensation with equity [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - Parental leave for all parents [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - Flexible PTO [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - Pre-tax commuter benefits [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
  - International team retreat each year [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
- **Team**: 92 total employees, 36 in Product + Tech [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)
- **Engineering culture**: Tech stack includes modern tools; roles like Lead Data Infrastructure Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Tech Lead positions indicate strong engineering focus [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)

## Sources
1. [stellic.com](https://www.stellic.com/)
2. [stellic.com/careers](https://www.stellic.com/careers)
3. [stellic.com/about](https://www.stellic.com/about)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/stellic)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/stellic)

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