Software Engineer 2

About StrongMind

StrongMind is a remote-first education and technology company on a mission to transform learning for students, families, and educators across the country. For more than 25 years, we've partnered with schools and districts to deliver innovative, student-centered learning experiences powered by technology, compassion, and bold thinking.

We believe education should be flexible, human, and built for real life. That belief shapes how we design our products, support our partners, and work together as a team. At StrongMind, you'll find smart people doing meaningful work, a culture rooted in trust and accountability, and leaders who genuinely care about both outcomes and people.

The Team You Will Join

You'll be part of StrongMind's Engineering organization, collaborating closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and Principal Engineers across multiple product teams. This group is responsible for building scalable, reliable, and increasingly AI-enabled learning systems that support educators and students nationwide.

The team culture is innovative, collaborative, and growth-oriented. You'll have opportunities to influence engineering practices, advance AI-enabled product development, and shape shared technical patterns while partnering across StrongMind to deliver meaningful educational outcomes.

About the Role

Independent contributor who ships features end-to-end, improves the code and data they touch, and uses AI-assisted tools to accelerate their work.

The Difference You Will Make

In this role, you'll take features from idea to production inside one of our product teams. You'll balance speed with quality, reduce technical debt inside your scope, and help your team deliver learning experiences that are reliable and easy to support. Your engineering judgment directly improves the product for students, educators, and internal teams.

A Typical Day Looks Like

While no two days are exactly the same, you can expect to:

• Independently deliver features in small, shippable increments—completing work with minimal rework and communicating tradeoffs in PRs and tickets

• Ship safe schema updates and data changes using established migration practices, writing queries to confirm root cause and adding validation where needed

• Identify and fix common performance issues using logs, metrics, profiling, and AI-assisted tools, sharing before/after metrics in PRs

• Deploy and operate a small-to-medium service end-to-end—resolving common runtime issues (scaling, permissions, connectivity) and configuring alarms/dashboards

• Remediate straightforward security findings (dependency updates, input validation, least-privilege fixes) and document security considerations in PRs

• Use agentic tools to explore approaches, identify edge cases, and propose sequencing; avoid “big bang” merges

• Run small spikes or prototypes to reduce uncertainty and align with PM/Design on scope before committing

• Pair with teammates to unblock them, provide helpful PR feedback, and contribute runbooks and how-to notes that reduce repeated questions

Your Expertise Includes

We're looking for someone who brings:

• 1+ years of professional software engineering experience shipping production code

• Strong foundation in a modern stack (web services, APIs, databases) and a track record of delivering features with minimal rework

• Proven ability to debug effectively using logs, metrics, and profiling

• Comfort making safe, incremental data/schema changes with migrations and validation

• Ability to balance speed and quality, choose appropriate patterns, and communicate tradeoffs clearly

• Clear written and verbal communication; keeps stakeholders informed and risks visible

• Alignment with StrongMind's core values: Kindness, Accountability, Collaboration, Innovation, and Grit

Bonus points if you also have:

• Practical use of AI-assisted development tools for exploration, refactoring, and optimization

• Experience with AWS or a comparable cloud platform

• Experience triaging production incidents and writing post-incident follow-ups

• EdTech or mission-driven product experience

Our Commitment to Inclusion & Belonging

At StrongMind, we believe the best ideas come from bringing together people with different perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking. A diverse and inclusive workplace fuels creativity, strengthens collaboration, and helps us build better solutions for the students, families, and communities we serve.

We are committed to welcoming a broad range of talent and encouraging all qualified individuals to apply. We strive to create an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and is empowered to contribute, grow, and do meaningful work.

How We'll Take Care of You

We believe that when people feel supported, they do their best work. At StrongMind, your well-being isn't a perk—it's part of our culture.

Our commitment to you includes:

• A competitive total compensation package, including HMO with dependent coverage upon regularization

• Well-being that works for real life — virtual wellness programs, and wellness because your well-being fuels your brilliance

• Leave Credits upon regularization – make time for what matters most

• A fully paid holiday week off at Christmas, so you can truly rest, reset, and reconnect

• Recognition and rewards that celebrate meaningful life and work milestones

• Quarterly Town Halls that keep communication transparent, honest, and human

• Annual social events and traditions we genuinely look forward to—like Halloween celebrations, Wellness Events, and other moments that bring our community together

We’re intentional about building a workplace where people feel valued, connected, and empowered to thrive—at work and beyond.