Staff Software Engineer

The Staff Software Engineer sets the technical direction for the platform that education leaders across the country rely on, working hands-on across the full stack to ship production AI systems and independently own the architecture behind them.

Working directly alongside the Co-Founder and CTPO, this engineer operates with minimal oversight and brings the technical judgment to set and defend architecture, tooling, and direction with real authority.

Your charge: architect the infrastructure for how leaders learn and lead.

About Seminar

Seminar is a Human-powered, AI-supported learning community for education leaders around the world. We help leaders sharpen their practice, expand their capacity, and build the schools of the future - together.

Our Mission

Seminar exists to unleash collective genius and accelerate the future of education. We design learning experiences that meet leaders where they are, strengthen day-to-day leadership practice, and create the conditions for innovation to take root and scale.

Role Overview

You’ll be getting in at the ground level, working directly alongside the founders to build out the next generation of products supporting our vibrant nationwide community of school leaders. This is a senior, hands-on role with high ownership and real influence into how we build what we build - both in the technology and the engineering culture we create as we grow. We're looking for someone with deep, hands-on experience shipping production AI systems who can evaluate technical tradeoffs independently and operate with minimal oversight.

You will report directly to the CTPO and Co-Founder, who leads product and technical strategy and builds hands-on alongside you! You’ll have real autonomy and the expectation that you will independently set and defend architecture, tooling, and technical direction.

Our goal is to build a platform that education leaders across the country rely on - and that powers Seminar’s growth. You will have a real impact on this from day one!

What You’ll Work On

Product Engineering

• Build, ship, and support user-facing features across the full stack - frontend, backend, data pipelines, infrastructure, testing, and monitoring. Our growing product suite includes a web app, browser extension, and AI tools, and you should be comfortable touching them all.
• Make final technical decisions about architecture, tooling, and third-party services at a pace that matches early-stage reality.
• Contribute to product thinking - while not your primary responsibility, you should be comfortable occasionally speaking to users and helping translate ideas into product specs that support both customer and business needs.

AI & Platform

• Lead the design and implementation of AI-powered workflows: things like integrating LLM APIs, building RAG pipelines, virtual context-driven assistants, and agentic systems.
• Work in close partnership with the Program team to ensure tight alignment between platform capabilities and the learning experiences leaders depend on.
• Help improve how we evaluate and iterate on our customer-facing AI tools, always with an eye towards enhancing - not replacing - human thinking.

Engineering Culture & Operations

• Influence the developer experience end-to-end - from local dev to testing to CI/CD to production monitoring.
• Establish and own engineering practices, documentation, and standards that will scale as the team grows.

Who You Are

• A well-rounded engineer with 8+ years of experience building and shipping production applications across the full stack in fast-paced environments.
• Experienced in JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems. Our stack is JS-focused front and back, and while we are likely to fold in some Python with our expanding AI capabilities, JS will always have a place!
• Uses AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) as a core part of how you build. You direct the AI with clear intent, catch subtle errors or design decisions that will cause problems down the road, and take ownership of the architecture and tradeoffs regardless of who or what wrote the code.
• Familiarity with the AWS cloud ecosystem.
• Product-minded. You think about the person on the other end of what we build, not just the thing itself.
• A clear communicator and collaborative partner across multiple business functions.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and high ownership.
• Motivated by building things that make a difference.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with our current stack: Vue.js (v3, Composition API), Node.js, Hono, Postgres (on RDS) with Drizzle, Voiceflow.
• Background in edtech, education, or similar mission-driven organizations.
• Experience working closely with product or founding teams in a startup or high-growth environment.

Compensation & Benefits

• $150K-$210K base salary, based on experience and competencies
• Meaningful early-stage equity
• Health insurance
• 401(k) with employer match
• Learning and development stipend (plus company-paid AI-assisted development tools)
• Generous PTO
• Fully remote (US-based)

Our Commitment to an Inclusive Team

Seminar serves school leaders in every kind of community - urban, rural, and suburban; well-resourced and under-resourced. Building a product worthy of that mission requires a team that reflects the diversity of the people we serve.

We are female-founded and strongly encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, including communities historically underrepresented in the technology industry not limited to people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, and veterans. If you’re excited about this role but unsure whether you meet every qualification, we’d still love to hear from you.

We evaluate candidates based on demonstrated ability and potential - not pedigree or proxies for privilege. We don’t require computer science degrees and design our process to let you show us how you think and work.

Why Seminar

This is a rare opportunity to help define how AI transforms leadership learning across the education sector. You’ll work side by side with the founders to build a platform that leaders rely on - one that improves real practice, strengthens communities, and scales impact thoughtfully.