---
title: 'Tech Lead, Explore at Stellic'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/tech-lead-explore-stellic-san-mateo-tf0y8j5xrxkb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Tech Lead, Explore at Stellic

- **Company:** Stellic
- **Location:** San Mateo, CA
- **Compensation:** $210k–$235k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/stellic/354b6e76-bcf8-482d-9086-58b0e24ce01f/application

**Skills:** Python, SQL, Django, Angular, React, Remix, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Redis, Git, AWS, AWS CodeDeploy, Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus, PostHog, Metabase, Multi-tenant architecture

> Lead the technical direction and architecture for Stellic's new Explore product, a 0-to-1 platform for student academic planning. You will establish multi-tenant system foundations, drive engineering excellence, and mentor the team while balancing rapid iteration with long-term scalability.

## Job description

Stellic is growing! We're looking for a Tech Lead our ****newest product, Explore. Explore is a platform that helps prospective and transfer students plan their academic pathways before they ever set foot on campus. This is a 0→1 product area with meaningful architectural stakes, and we are looking for a technical leader who thrives in ambiguity and can build for the long term while moving fast.

## 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 EXPLORE TEAM

The Explore team owns Stellic's newest product, focused on helping prospective and transfer students plan their academic pathways before enrolling at an institution. This product extends Stellic beyond enrolled students, introducing new workflows and user journeys centered around discovery, planning, and decision-making prior to joining a university. Explore is also the first system at Stellic to introduce multi-tenant concepts, which means the team is breaking new ground in how data is shared, isolated, and managed across institutions. As a newer product area, the team operates with a higher degree of ambiguity and iteration — balancing rapid product development with the need to establish a strong architectural foundation that can scale. As technical lead on Explore, you'll play a key role in shaping both the product and the underlying systems, helping define how Stellic expands into new user segments and new architectural paradigms.

## ABOUT YOU

You've built product surfaces from 0 to 1 before, and you know how to make smart architectural calls when the path forward isn't fully defined yet. You're comfortable operating with ambiguity, and you bring strong judgment to decisions that will have long-term consequences. You understand that speed and quality aren't opposites — you know how to move fast while laying foundations that hold.

## AS OUR EXPLORE LEAD, YOU WILL OWN

- The Explore product, end to end: Own the technical direction and evolution of the Explore product, from new capabilities for prospective and transfer students to the underlying systems that power them.
- Multi-tenant architecture foundations: Establish the foundational patterns for Stellic's first multi-tenant system — defining how data is shared, isolated, and managed across institutions in a way that can scale.
- Pragmatic architectural decisions in an evolving product space: Make clear, defensible calls in a fast-moving environment, balancing the speed of iteration with the need to build systems that hold up over time.
- Clean, ergonomic APIs and reliable abstractions: Build and maintain the APIs and abstractions that handle complex business logic and data flows, keeping things simple for the engineers who build on top of them.
- 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

- 5+ years of backend or full stack engineering experience operating at scale, with a track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead
- Experience building and scaling 0→1 and 1→10 product surfaces — you know what it looks like to go from nothing to something real
- Strong judgment in making architectural decisions in evolving and ambiguous domains
- Experience introducing and shaping new system patterns (e.g., multi-tenant concepts, data sharing models)
- Ability to balance speed, iteration, and long-term system design without sacrificing one for the other
- Strong proficiency in SQL and database optimization (PostgreSQL a plus)
- 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

## 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)

## Other roles at Stellic

- [Product Delivery Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/product-delivery-lead-stellic-san-mateo-swn4af63t0xn) — San Mateo, CA
- [Lead Data Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-data-engineer-stellic-san-mateo-zxszh6yvsdgk) — San Mateo, CA
- [Solutions Consultant](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-consultant-stellic-san-mateo-qha0sy47n72n) — San Mateo, CA
- [Product Lead, Explore](https://feeny.ai/job/product-lead-explore-stellic-san-mateo-5c746s5681ak) — San Mateo, CA
- [Senior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-stellic-san-mateo-s3de5p2dvyf6) — San Mateo, CA
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