Full-Stack Software Engineer

Straia, Inc

$150K — $180K *
Education, Government & Non-Profit
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4-6 years of experience in full-stack web application development.
  • Strong proficiency in React and the ability to create user-friendly interfaces.
  • Experience with Node.js, TypeScript, and building production backend services.
  • Familiarity with relational databases, API integration, and ideally analytical databases like DuckDB.
  • Interest in AI integration and basic understanding of model inference.
  • Demonstrated ownership and proactive problem-solving skills in a fast-paced environment.
  • Mission-driven mindset focused on improving student outcomes through technology.

Responsibilities

  • Ship features end-to-end from frontend to backend.
  • Build intuitive interfaces and APIs for AI integration.
  • Connect the application to data stacks and optimize query performance.
  • Take full ownership of feature development from idea to production.
  • Develop internal tools to enhance team efficiency through automation.
  • Ensure quality and resilience in software by implementing observability and testing practices.

Benefits

  • Platinum health insurance, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Opportunity to work in a collaborative and mission-driven environment.
  • Equity incentives as part of the compensation package.
Full Job Description
The Role

As a Full Stack Engineer, you'll work across our entire stack with our CTO (Nikki) and the rest of our engineering team - from the React frontend to the Node/TypeScript backend - to build the product surface where institutions interact with their data and AI agents.

This is a 0 126 1 opportunity to ship features end-to-end on a product that moves institutional data at scale, runs privately hosted frontier models, and delivers low-latency insights to non-technical users making real decisions about student outcomes.

You'll own meaningful chunks of the product from day one - designing, building, and shipping the interfaces and APIs that turn messy institutional data into clear, actionable answers. We move fast, keep the loop between idea and production short, and trust engineers to take real ownership of what they build.

We're looking for someone with high agency who's happiest shipping. The kind of engineer who picks up an ambiguous problem, drives it from blank page to production, and sweats the details that make a product feel great to use. If you thrive when expectations are high and the pace is fast, you'll feel right at home

What You'll Do
  • Ship features end-to-end - Own work across the whole stack, from the React + Vite frontend to the Node + Express + TypeScript backend. You'll take features from design through delivery and iteration, and you'll care about how they feel for the people using them.
  • Build the AI agent experience - Create the interfaces and APIs where non-technical users ask questions and get back insights, visualizations, and automated workflows. You'll make AI feel like a natural, first-class part of the product.
  • Connect the product to data and models - Wire the application layer up to our data stack (Postgres + DuckDB) and model inference, and keep query and inference latency low enough that the product feels instantaneous.
  • Own your work end-to-end - You won't just pick up tickets. You'll scope, build, and ship features with real autonomy, make pragmatic calls under ambiguity, and take genuine ownership of the things you deliver.
  • Build internal tooling and automations - Help build the leverage that lets a small team operate like one ten times its size, automating away the things that slow engineers down.
  • Care about quality and resilience - Treat observability, testing, and fault tolerance as part of the job, not an afterthought. You build things that are easy to understand, debug, and recover.

Who You Are
  • Strong full-stack background - 4-6 years building and shipping production web applications across the stack, comfortable moving between frontend and backend in the same week.
  • Fluent on the frontend - Solid experience with a modern frontend framework (React preferred) and an eye for building clean, intuitive interfaces for real users.
  • Solid on the backend - Experienced building and operating production backend services and APIs, ideally in Node.js / TypeScript, with a good grasp of databases and data modeling.
  • Comfortable with data - You've worked with relational databases and APIs in production. Experience with analytical or columnar databases (DuckDB, BigQuery) is a strong plus.
  • Curious about AI integration - You don't need to be an ML engineer, but you're excited to integrate LLMs and models into a product and learn what makes inference reliable and fast at scale. Prior experience wrapping models or third-party APIs is a bonus.
  • High agency - You take ownership, drive features from blank page to production, and don't wait to be told what to do next. You communicate your reasoning clearly and know when to move fast versus when to align first.
  • Mission-driven - Excited about using technology to help universities make smarter, faster, more equitable decisions for their students.

Our Stack
  • Cloud: GCP managed via Pulumi
  • Data Layer: Postgres + DuckDB
  • LLM Inference: Privately Hosted Frontier Model on GCP, plus API integrations with GPT, Gemini, and Claude
  • Backend: Node.js + Express + TypeScript
  • Frontend: React + Vite

What We Offer
  • Compensation: $150K-$180K + equity
  • Location: San Francisco (in office 4 days a week)
  • Benefits: Health (platinum insurance), dental, and vision

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