---
title: 'Tech Lead, Plan at Stellic'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/tech-lead-plan-stellic-san-mateo-nafvjfmr2kgm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Tech Lead, Plan at Stellic

- **Company:** Stellic
- **Location:** San Mateo, CA
- **Compensation:** $210k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/stellic/f08b6cd8-38e3-4003-a538-918e7b4138d2/application

**Skills:** Python, SQL, Django, PostgreSQL, AWS, Git, Angular, React, Remix, ElasticSearch, Redis, Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus, PostHog, Metabase, AWS CodeDeploy, Event-based architectures

> Stellic seeks a Tech Lead for the Plan team to own the technical direction of student planning, scheduling, and registration systems. The role focuses on ensuring reliability under peak load, driving engineering excellence, and evolving product experiences.

## Job description

Stellic is growing! We're looking for a ****Tech Lead for the Plan team that owns the systems that power how students plan their academic journeys — from degree planning and pathways to scheduling and registration. This is a high-stakes, high-visibility area of our product, and we need a technical leader who can keep these systems reliable under peak load while shaping the next generation of planning experiences.

## 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 PLAN TEAM

The Plan team owns the systems that enable students to plan their academic journey — including degree planning and pathways, scheduling, and registration. This area is actively evolving from curriculum-centric planning toward more flexible, pathway- and career-oriented experiences, requiring the team to rethink how students explore options and make decisions about their academic paths. A critical part of this system is registration, which allows students to enroll in courses at their university. Registration periods are high-stakes moments where reliability, performance, and seamless execution are non-negotiable. The team is currently focused on improving the reliability, scalability, and performance of these systems, while continuing to evolve the product to support more dynamic and personalized planning experiences. As technical lead on Plan, you'll play a key role in ensuring these systems operate predictably and efficiently under peak load, while shaping the next generation of planning and pathway experiences.

## ABOUT YOU

You've built and operated reliable systems in high-stakes environments before, and you know what it takes to keep things running smoothly when the pressure is on. You have strong intuition for performance and concurrency, and you're equally comfortable thinking about long-term product evolution and near-term system stability. You care about getting the details right and can balance competing priorities without losing sight of either.

## AS OUR PLAN LEAD, YOU WILL OWN

- Planning, pathways, scheduling, and registration — end to end: Own the technical direction and evolution of the systems that power these core student-facing experiences across their academic journey.
- Reliability of registration systems: Ensure registration systems perform predictably and efficiently during high-stakes registration periods, when students and institutions are counting on every interaction to work.
- Systems built for peak load: Design systems that handle concurrency and peak demand gracefully, with clear strategies for testing and validating behavior at scale.
- The shift to career-focused planning: Enable our product to evolve from degree-centric planning toward more flexible, pathway- and career-oriented experiences — without sacrificing the stability of the systems underneath.
- Testing strategies at scale: Ensure quality by designing robust, scalable testing strategies that validate system behavior under the conditions that matter most — including peak load and high-concurrency registration scenarios.
- 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 engineering experience operating at scale, with a track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead
- Experience owning and operating reliable systems in high-stakes workflows where performance and availability are critical
- Strong intuition for designing systems that behave predictably under peak load and concurrency
- Ability to balance product evolution with system stability and performance — you can push things forward without breaking what's already working
- Strong proficiency in SQL and database optimization (PostgreSQL a plus)
- Comfort with asynchronous / event-based architectures
- 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)

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