Engineering Lead

WHO ARE YOU?

You are a hands-on technical leader that enjoys being in a player-coach type of role. You want a role that calls upon your collaboration, communication and management skills while working towards the shared goal of ensuring quality work results.

WHO ARE WE?

We are passionate, innovative, lifelong learners, and creative thinkers working to develop culturally authentic language learning products for K-12 schools and universities.

WHAT IS THIS ROLE ABOUT?

As the Engineering Lead , you will serve as a central part of the software development team and join a small team of other Engineering Leads. You will be a hands‑on leader that works closely with engineering leadership, business stakeholders, and oversees scrum teams focused on prioritizing, planning, and delivering enhancements in our learning platform.

OUR TECHNOLOGY STACK

• Languages/Frameworks: Ruby/Rails, JS, Vue
• Persistence: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch
• Hosting: AWS

IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL:

• Set clear expectations and align individual performance goals with organizational priorities; provide regular feedback, performance reviews, and career development support.
• Mentor engineers at all levels, fostering a culture of continuous learning, professional growth, and technical excellence.
• Actively contribute to building a high‑performing engineering team by participating in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring processes.
• Help shape a collaborative and inclusive team culture that supports innovation and long‑term retention.
• Lead and advocate across all phases of the software development lifecycle, including project planning, system architecture, implementation, release, and continuous optimization.
• Proactively guide and oversee scrum teams, ensuring development plans are well‑defined, timelines are realistic, and deliverables meet high standards of quality.
• Collaborate with technology leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders to influence technical strategy and inform scalable solution design.
• Work effectively across teams to identify and implement opportunities for innovation, quality enhancements, and process improvements, ensuring alignment with broader organizational goals.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non‑technical audiences to align on progress, challenges, and outcomes.
• Serve as a liaison between engineering and other departments to drive transparency, clarity, and shared accountability.
• Conduct code reviews to uphold high standards in code quality, performance, testability, and accessibility, while reinforcing consistency with style guidelines and engineering best practices.

YOU MUST HAVE (MINIMUM REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE)

• Bachelor’s degree
• 5 to 7 years software engineering experience developing large‑scale systems.
• 1+ year of people management experience including supervising people, work, and providing performance feedback
• Experience collaborating with other departments/teams
• Excellent communication, listening and interpersonal skills to be able to actively listen to needs and respond to audience appropriately

Software Management and System Design

• Deep hands‑on experience leading full software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes, including project scoping, architectural design, agile execution, CI/CD pipeline management, release coordination, and post‑deployment optimization.
• Proven ability to take full ownership of product quality, delivery timelines, and release stability, ensuring that systems perform reliably in production environments.
• Proven experience leading multiple scrum teams in agile environments, with demonstrated success in coordinating sprint planning, daily stand‑ups, retrospectives, and backlog grooming using tools like Jira and Confluence.
• Results‑oriented with a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating risks, driving projects from concept to completion with clear accountability and outcomes.
• Demonstrated technical proficiency in architecting, building, and maintaining complex software systems demartysigned for scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Deep experience designing and deploying mission‑critical applications in cloud environments such as AWS or GCP, including solutions built for high availability and performance optimization.
• Expertise in SDLC best practices to ensure consistent delivery of high‑quality, maintainable code across teams.

Technical Knowledge and Proficiencies

• Programming & Frameworks: Ruby on Rails
• AWS or GCP for scalable, secure application deployment
• Development Tools: SQL, Unix command‑line, Git/GitHub
• Collaboration & DevOps: Agile tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence), CI/CD pipelines, geographically distributed team coordination

IDEAL IF YOU HAVE or ARE (PREFERRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE)

• Master’s degree and certifications a plus.

LOCATION:

Position requires current residence within the United States of America. Ideal candidates will be located within close proximity to our Boston office location, be willing to work a 2‑day in‑office/3‑day remote Hybrid schedule or within the US eastern standard time zone. Relocation assistance is not available.

SALARY:

$150k‑$170k annual budgeted salary range

This position is salaried and is eligible for an annual incentive based on employee and organizational performance.