---
title: 'Tech Lead, Progress at Stellic'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/tech-lead-progress-stellic-san-mateo-x5b6amp4vvb3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Tech Lead, Progress at Stellic

- **Company:** Stellic
- **Location:** San Mateo, CA
- **Compensation:** $210k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-05-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/stellic/28266f39-9c7b-4460-972c-fd12c5ba2aef/application

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

> The Progress Lead owns the technical direction of the Degree Progress product, evolving from a search-based system to a SAT solver-driven architecture. This role involves designing purpose-built testing frameworks, ensuring system scalability and reliability, and partnering with algorithms and product teams to deliv...

## Job description

Stellic is growing! We're looking for a Progress Lead to own the technical direction of our Degree Progress product. We're evolving from a search-based system to a SAT solver–driven architecture, and we need a technical leader who can operationalize that algorithmic power into a product that students and universities can genuinely trust.

## 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 PROGRESS TEAM

The Progress team owns Stellic's [Degree Progress](https://www.stellic.com/progress) product, which enables students and administrators to track progress toward degree requirements and academic goals. The team is split across two closely related areas:

- Compute: focuses on the underlying algorithm and correctness of results
- Product: focuses on applying, validating, and presenting those results in a reliable and intuitive way

This role leads the entire team, working in close partnership with our algorithms lead. The team's primary focus right now is improving the scalability and reliability of the system, with a heavy emphasis on building purpose-built testing frameworks to validate complex and highly variable degree requirements.

## ABOUT YOU

You've built systems where correctness isn't negotiable — where the output needs to be right, explainable, and testable across a massive range of edge cases. You think deeply about validation, debugging, and what it means to deliver reliable outcomes in complex domains. You're as comfortable partnering with an algorithms lead as you are setting technical direction for your own team.

## AS OUR PROGRESS LEAD, YOU WILL OWN

- Degree Progress systems, end to end: Own the systems that orchestrate and operationalize results from the SAT solver into user-facing experiences — applying, validating, and presenting degree progress outcomes in a way that students and advisors can trust.
- Algorithm-to-product integration: Partner closely with our algorithms lead to ensure seamless integration between compute outputs and product behavior across the full range of edge cases that complex degree requirements introduce.
- Purpose-built testing frameworks: Design and implement testing infrastructure specifically built to validate complex and highly variable degree requirements — one of the team's biggest current investments.
- Correctness and reliability: Ensure the system delivers reliable, explainable outcomes across edge cases, with clear guarantees around performance and behavior.
- Technical prioritization: Drive alignment on engineering-driven priorities alongside product priorities.
- Engineering excellence: Drive engineering excellence by defining and mentoring on best practices, design patterns, and code quality.

## 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
- Strong intuition for designing systems that produce correct, explainable outcomes in ambiguous or edge-case-heavy domains
- Experience building or working with purpose-built testing frameworks for validating complex business logic
- Ability to reason about and debug systems where correctness verification is non-trivial
- Expertise building highly optimized, robust systems at scale
- Deep experience with backend engineering using high-level programming languages and frameworks
- 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 — 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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