RISE Senior Software Developer

Reports to: Product Manager

Salary: Competitive and commensurate with experience

Location: New Haven, CT (Hybrid or remote)

Overview:

The RISE Network’s (RISE) mission is to ensure all high school students graduate with a plan and the skills and confidence to achieve college and career success. Founded in 2016, RISE partners with public high schools to lead networks where communities work together to use data to learn and improve. Through its core and most comprehensive network, RISE partners with nine high schools and eight districts, serving over 13,000 students in historically marginalized communities. 

RISE high schools work together to ensure all students experience success as they transition to, through, and beyond high school by using data to pinpoint needs, form hypotheses, and pursue ideas to advance student achievement. Partner schools have improved Grade 9 promotion rates by nearly 20 percentage points, while also decreasing subgroup gaps and increasing schoolwide graduation and college access rates. In 2021, RISE was honored to receive the Carnegie Foundation’s annual Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement recognition. Increasingly, RISE is pursuing opportunities to scale its impact through research publications, consulting partnerships, professional development experiences, and other avenues to drive excellent student outcomes.

Position Summary and Essential Job Functions:

RISE is at a pivotal position: we know our data tools work for educators and we’re in the early stages of scaling our reach. We recently doubled our customer base over a 6 month period and are aiming to serve 100,000 students within the next few years. We have a solid core set of features that hundreds of users rely on every day to do their jobs, and we’re focused on refining and enhancing the experience for those users. We’re also navigating the transition from our first minimal product to a more robust, scalable SaaS offering. We are looking for an experienced, knowledgeable individual to join the Product Team, reporting to the Product Manager. This person will be the technical voice of our codebase, provide key input for decisions about our technical direction, and lead the development of our web application(s) as part of a small team. This is an extraordinary opportunity for an individual who thrives in an entrepreneurial environment and is passionate about closing achievement gaps and developing the potential of all students regardless of life circumstances.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

1. Full Stack Web Development

• Act as Lead Developer for the Product Team.

• Optimize performance throughout the application.

• Advise the Product Manager on balancing new features with tech health.

• Write clean, valid, and maintainable code that empowers collaboration.

• Write unit and end-to-end tests to ensure code sustainability.

• Perform thorough code reviews and debug production issues across multiple levels of the stack.

2. Collaborative Software Design

• Work with the Product Manager and with Data Engineering to understand product roadmap priorities.

• Remain focused on advancing RISE’s mission by ensuring that products are designed to lead to improved student outcomes and deliver value to the educators using our products.

• Contribute collaboratively to the architecture and design of a young web-based platform.

• Champion good habits (e.g., clear and consistent documentation, security, tech debt balance, appropriate testing…) within the team; improve coding standards, tooling, and processes.

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Proficient in common JavaScript frameworks

• Firebase, or other cloud-based data services 

• Google Sign-in, or other user authentication and authorization systems

• Experience with Git or other version control systems

• Outstanding interpersonal skills and teamwork

• Commitment to systems-driven solutions for scalable and sustained impact

• Strong organizational and project management skills

• Strong belief that all students can learn and achieve at high levels

• Ability to quickly learn new content and work in an independent and self-motivated manner

• Positive attitude and willingness to work in a collaborative environment

Preferred Knowledge and Skills:

• Our stack includes Vue, Node, and Nuxt hosted on Firebase. Specific experience with these technologies is preferred, but not required

• Experience with Agile software development

• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines

• NoSQL data modeling for document databases (e.g. Firestore, MongoDB)

Required Education and Experience:

• At least 5 years of experience developing and deploying web applications in a production environment

• At least 3 years of experience using relational or document databases

• At least 1 year of Senior Developer responsibility or similar (Solo Dev, Tech Lead, etc.)

Salary Range:

$100,000- $120,000

Most new hires' salaries fall within the first half of the range, allowing team members to grow in their roles. For those who already have significant and aligned experiences at the same level as the role, placement may be at the higher end of the range.

RISE is an Equal Opportunity Employer.