Senior Software Engineer, Optimizer
Help half a million students get the schedules they need by building the optimization engine at the heart of our scheduling platform.
Location
Remote (US-based); East Coast preferred, especially New York or Boston
Compensation
$160K–$200K base + equity, with a flexible cash/equity mix
Team
Optimizer team: you plus three engineers, led by a tech lead
Focus
~80% backend, ~20% frontend
Experience
4–10 years as a software engineer
About the Client
We’re an education technology company transforming how schools build schedules for teachers and students. For decades, the master schedule has been built by hand, consuming educators’ time and producing sub-optimal results for students.
We combine AI-powered schedule optimization with expert support from experienced school schedulers. District and school leaders use it to build master schedules that balance student, academic, and resource priorities, better support special education students and English language learners, and open access to the courses and pathways that shape students’ lives.
In four years, we’ve grown from two pilot districts to serving half a million students across 20+ states, with growth and renewal rates that lead the edtech industry. Customers are now entering their third and fourth years of renewal. We closed our Series A in August 2025, led by mission-aligned investors Workshop Ventures and A Street, and have 3+ years of runway.
About 80% of our ~60 people are former educators, including co-founder, who started his career as a math teacher. That background shapes a culture of learning, mentorship, and genuine care for one another.
The role
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Optimizer team, you’ll turn the real-world constraints of a school, such as teacher availability, room capacity, course requirements, and student needs, into mathematical models that produce better schedules. You’ll own critical parts of the optimization engine end to end, from formulating models to shipping them in production systems that districts rely on every year.
You’ll join a lean, scrappy, and deeply collaborative engineering team led by our CTO. You’ll work with three other engineers under a tech lead, with room to lead complex projects yourself. The role is about 80% backend and 20% frontend, and we value engineers who care about understanding the product and the educators who use it.
Our engineering team spans multiple time zones, including Europe and India, so some early-morning overlap is part of the job.
What you’ll do
- Design, build, and own mission-critical optimization algorithms and modules that generate master schedules for schools and districts.
- Translate scheduling problems and mathematical formulations into production-grade optimization code using solvers such as Gurobi and Google OR-Tools CP-SAT.
- Build and scale the backend systems around the optimizer, including APIs, asynchronous job processing, and cloud infrastructure on AWS.
- Contribute across the stack, including frontend work (about 20% of your time) that brings optimizer results to life for users.
- Lead complex technical projects from scoping through delivery, acting as tech lead when the work calls for it.
- Partner with product, our school scheduling experts, and other non-technical teams to understand customer needs and shape what we build.
- Run technical discussions and meetings, and share context clearly with stakeholders across functions.
- Mentor teammates informally and help shape engineering culture as the team grows.
What you bring
- 4–10 years of experience as a software engineer, with deep expertise in optimization modules or ML/AI algorithms.
- Hands-on experience building linear optimization or machine learning models and algorithms, and translating mathematical models into working technology.
- A track record of building mission-critical algorithms or owning an ML model for a key product area.
- Experience with linear optimization modeling, solvers, or tools such as Gurobi or CP-SAT, or a strong optimization foundation and the drive to learn these tools quickly.
- Strong backend engineering skills: systems infrastructure, APIs, asynchronous tasks, and scalable web applications. You currently spend at least 50–60% of your time writing code.
- Proficiency in Python (preferred), with flexibility to work in other languages.
- Experience leading complex technical projects and shipping complex products and features to customers.
- A generalist mindset: you’re comfortable contributing across the stack, including frontend work, and adapting to what the team needs.
- Product and project thinking, plus the ability to work with stakeholders, run meetings, and collaborate with non-technical teams.
- Comfort working with colleagues in Europe and India, including early-morning overlap.
- A degree in computer science or another technical field.
Nice to have
- Experience in domains that rely on optimization and scheduling technology, such as ride-hailing, e-commerce, or shipping and logistics.
- A generalist machine learning background.
- Experience working with cloud infrastructure such as AWS.
- A degree in mathematics or electrical engineering.
- Based on the East Coast, ideally in New York or Boston.
Why join us
- Real impact at scale. Half a million students already depend on schedules built with our technology, and your work directly shapes their access to courses and pathways.
- Stability with startup energy. A Series A from mission-driven, patient-capital investors, 3+ years of runway, and industry-leading growth and renewals.
- Compensation that fits you. $160K–$200K base plus equity, with a flexible approach to balancing cash and equity based on your preferences.
- Comprehensive benefits. Health, dental, vision, and life insurance, plus unlimited PTO.
- Growth and learning. A professional development budget and free access to online learning programs, inside a culture built by former educators.
- Remote by design. Fully remote with a global team and no return-to-office risk. Every engineer is a valued member of the team, wherever they’re based.
- Outsized ownership. We’re moving from proving product-market fit to scaling, so you’ll have real influence on the product, the architecture, and the team culture.
Interview process
Our process is designed to be focused and respectful of your time.
- Take-home exercise focused on algorithms, so you can show how you approach an optimization problem.
- Technical interviews with the engineering team to dig into your solution, your experience, and how you design systems.
- Debrief and final conversations to discuss fit, answer your questions, and talk through next steps.
We’re hiring for one role and moving quickly. If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you.