
Senior Software Engineer at Stellic (San Mateo, CA)
Stellic· San Mateo, CA· $185k–$235k·
Role details
Health Insurance With Stellic Covering 99% Of Premium · 401(K) · Commuter Benefits · Equity · Annual International Retreats
Summary
Stellic is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead feature delivery, ensure code quality, and mentor junior engineers. The role involves cross-functional collaboration and contributing to engineering initiatives across various product teams.
Job description
Stellic is growing, and we're hiring Senior Software Engineers across all of our product teams. If you're a great engineer who cares about impact and wants to own meaningful work — we want to hear from you. Our HQ is in San Mateo and we have a hybrid office culture so we would prefer that you could come into the office too but we are also open to great remote (within the US) candidates.
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.
ABOUT YOU
You're a strong engineer who takes real ownership of your work — from the first line of code to production. You care about quality, move with urgency, and get energized by problems that have genuine impact. You thrive in small, high-trust teams where you're expected to think, not just execute.
AS OUR SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, YOU WILL OWN
- Feature delivery end-to-end: Lead impactful projects from scoping through release — shipping new capabilities and improvements that directly change how students and advisors experience Stellic.
- Code quality and standards: Hold the bar high on testing, security, accessibility, and the practices that keep a codebase healthy as it scales.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Partner closely with Product and Design to make sure what gets built actually solves the right problems — and stay close to customer outcomes.
- Mentorship: Help junior engineers grow by sharing context, giving direct feedback, and modeling strong engineering habits.
- Engineering initiatives: Contribute to broader efforts that improve scalability, operational efficiency, and how the team ships.
TO BE SUCCESSFUL, YOU SHOULD HAVE
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering
- Strong fundamentals across front-end and/or back-end development — we care more about how you think and build than the specific stack
- Experience shipping production software in a collaborative, fast-moving environment
- Testing and CI/CD experience — you know what good looks like and hold yourself to it
- Strong communication skills and comfort working cross-functionally with Product, Design, and fellow engineers
- A track record of ownership — you've taken projects from idea to outcome and felt accountable for the result
OUR ENGINEERING TEAMS
We're hiring across Platform, Progress, Integration, Explore, and Care.
- Platform: 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.
- Plan: Owns the systems that enable students to plan their academic journey, including degree planning & pathways, scheduling, and registration.
- Progress: Owns Stellic's Degree Progress product, which enables students and administrators to track progress toward degree requirements and academic goals.
- Integration: Responsible for the critical bridge between university Student Information Systems (SIS) and Stellic. This integration layer is foundational to ensuring that Stellic's data remains accurate, up-to-date, and trustworthy.
- Explore: Owns Stellic's newest product, focused on helping prospective and transfer students plan their academic pathways before enrolling at an institution.
- Care: Builds software for academic advisors. The product brings student support data and interactions into one shared profile so advisors can prioritize outreach and follow up earlier, leaders can see how support is working, and students experience continuity instead of starting over each time they ask for help.
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
- Architecture: Both single and multi-tenant
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.
Why work at Stellic
- 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
- Work environment: Hybrid — San Mateo office encourages in-office Tuesdays and Thursdays; Karachi office encourages Mondays and Thursdays. Flexible policy overall builtin.com
- Perks:
- 99% covered health, dental, and vision insurance stellic.com
- 401(k) and IRA plans stellic.com
- Market-aligned compensation with equity stellic.com
- Parental leave for all parents stellic.com
- Flexible PTO stellic.com
- Pre-tax commuter benefits stellic.com
- International team retreat each year stellic.com
- Team: 92 total employees, 36 in Product + Tech builtin.com
- 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