What are the responsibilities and job description for the Software Engineer (Mid-Level) – Building the Future of HR Tech (Workforce Transformation) position at Onwards HR?
About Onwards HR
Onwards HR is a fast-growing startup building the leading workforce transition platform for responsible organizations. We help companies navigate one of the hardest moments in business—workforce change—by making it more structured, compliant, and human.
Our platform is used by HR, Legal, and People teams at sophisticated enterprises to plan and govern workforce transitions with confidence. We sit at the intersection of compliance, product, and people experience—helping organizations reduce risk, create consistency, and support employees through moments that truly matter.
We’re a small, ambitious team tackling complex problems that most HR software avoids. If you’re excited to build enterprise-grade software, care deeply about craftsmanship and impact, and want your work to touch real people at pivotal moments, you’ll feel at home here.
About the Role
We’re looking for a talented and motivated Mid-Level Software Engineer to help build the future of the Onwards HR platform. You’ll work closely with engineers, product, and design to ship thoughtful, scalable features that power seamless workforce transition experiences for customers and employees.
This is an excellent role for someone who enjoys ownership, thrives in a fast-paced startup environment, and wants to grow their technical depth while building software that must be secure, reliable, and easy to use.
What You’ll Work On
Examples of what you may build (depending on your strengths and team needs):
- Workflow tooling for HR Legal teams (approvals, templates, document generation, exception handling)
- Integrations with HRIS and payroll systems
- Secure employee-facing experiences for separation steps and communications
- Internal tooling for monitoring, auditing, and compliance-related reporting
- Improvements to performance, reliability, and testing coverage across the platform
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain production-ready web applications using modern frameworks and best practices
- Partner with Product and Design to translate requirements into pragmatic avoidable-risk technical solutions
- Build clean, readable, well-tested code (unit integration regression coverage)
- Participate in code reviews and contribute to a culture of high-quality engineering
- Debug and resolve software defects, performance bottlenecks, and reliability issues
- Contribute to internal documentation and engineering standards that help the team move faster
- Improve observability (logging, error tracking, metrics) to protect customer experiences
- Stay current on emerging patterns and tools and propose improvements to platform architecture, developer experience, and delivery workflows
What Success Looks Like (First 90 Days)
- You can comfortably ship production changes end-to-end with support from the team
- You proactively identify edge cases and reliability risks (and communicate them clearly)
- You contribute meaningfully to a feature area (and improve it through testing refinement)
- You build strong relationships with Product/Design and participate in shaping solutions—not just implementing tickets
Qualifications (Required)
- 3–6 years of professional software engineering experience (or equivalent practical experience)
- Proficiency with JavaScript/TypeScript and modern web development patterns
- Experience with at least one modern framework such as React and backend development using Node.js (or similar)
- Working knowledge of relational databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL
- Strong problem-solving ability, attention to detail, and comfort debugging complex issues
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across functions in an agile environment
- A growth mindset: you enjoy learning, iterating, and improving the way software is built
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building scalable, secure systems on AWS or GCP
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and deployment best practices
- Experience with observability tools (e.g., logging, monitoring, alerting, error tracking)
- Comfort working in regulated or sensitive domains (HR tech, legal tech, fintech, etc.)
- Experience contributing to architectural decisions or leading small projects end-to-end
Engineering Values We Care About
- Customer empathy: HR employees are navigating high-stakes moments
- Quality & reliability: enterprise workflows demand correctness
- Clarity over complexity: simple, maintainable solutions win
- Ownership: we take initiative and follow through
- Security-conscious development: we protect sensitive data by default
Benefits & Perks
- Competitive salary stock options
- 401(k) with company match
- Health/wellness credit
- Remote-first flexibility
- Opportunities for professional growth and career development
- Supportive, collaborative team environment
Ready to Make an Impact?
If you’re passionate about building meaningful software—and want to help enterprise employers deliver a more compliant and compassionate workforce transition experience—we’d love to meet you.
Apply to join Onwards HR and help redefine how companies support employees through transitions.