Staff Software Engineer - School Safety Platform

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><div><strong>What We Do</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>At GoGuardian, we’re helping build a future where all learners are ready and inspired to solve the world’s greatest challenges. Our award-winning system of learning solutions is purpose-built for K-12 and trusted by school leaders to promote effective teaching and equitable engagement while helping empower educators to keep students safe.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What It’s Like to Work at GoGuardian</strong></div> <div> <p>We are an outcomes-focused learning company with a steadfast focus on improving learning environments, one classroom at a time. Working with us means joining a remote team of diverse, committed, mission-driven employees who are inspired by our vision, dedicated to our customers, and ready to roll up their sleeves. Guardians put their heads together to solve problems, learn together from experiments that fail, and stand together by their work with full accountability. We balance our diligence with an inclusive culture that invites everyone to bring their whole self to work. Join us and learn why “I love the people here” is one of the most frequent comments we hear from Guardians.</p> </div></div><p><strong>The Role</strong></p> <p>At GoGuardian, we're expanding our mission of helping every student learn, thrive, and feel safe. We're building a new generation of school safety products that help schools respond faster, operate more effectively, and create safer learning environments for millions of students and educators.</p> <p>As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be an early technical leader helping define and build category-defining products where software, hardware, and real-world operational reliability intersect. This is a rare opportunity to work on 0-to-1 products that directly impact student safety while solving complex engineering challenges across cloud platforms, real-time systems, device integrations, and large-scale distributed architectures.</p> <p>The systems you'll build are integration-heavy, compliance-aware, and highly reliable. They must function in real-world school environments where timely information, operational resilience, and ease of use matter. You'll partner closely with Product, Design, Principal Engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape technical strategy, establish engineering foundations, and deliver products trusted by schools every day. You'll work closely with principal architects to execute on technical strategy and ship v1 products that real institutions trust with safety-critical workflows.</p> <p>If you're energized by ambiguous problems, building new products from the ground up, and creating technology that delivers meaningful impact for students and educators, we'd love to talk with you.</p> <p><strong>Why This Role Matters</strong></p> <p>Every day, schools depend on technology to help protect students, support educators, and respond effectively when situations arise. The products built by this team will be used in real-world environments where reliability, usability, and trust are essential.</p> <p>This is an opportunity to work on technically challenging problems at the intersection of software, hardware, distributed systems, and operational reliability while building products that have a meaningful and lasting impact on students, educators, and school communities.</p> <p>The engineers who join this team will help define the foundation of an entirely new product area at GoGuardian and shape how schools leverage technology to create safer learning environments for years to come.</p> <p><strong>What You'll Do</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead architecture, technical design, and implementation of new school safety products from concept through production.</li> <li>Drive technical strategy and engineering excellence across multiple teams and systems.</li> <li>Design scalable, secure, and resilient distributed systems that operate reliably in real-world environments.</li> <li>Build and maintain integrations with third-party platforms, identity providers, communication systems, hardware devices, and external data sources.</li> <li>Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Engineering leaders to translate customer needs into practical technical solutions.</li> <li>Mentor engineers, raise engineering standards, and help shape the technical culture of a growing organization.</li> <li>Make thoughtful technology decisions that balance customer impact, operational complexity, speed of execution, and long-term maintainability.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Must-Have Technical Skills</strong></p> <ul> <li>8+ years of experience building and operating production software systems.</li> <li>Proven track record of owning and delivering complex backend or full-stack systems end-to-end.</li> <li>Strong experience designing distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native applications.</li> <li>Experience building integration-heavy platforms involving third-party APIs, webhooks, data synchronization, and identity systems (OAuth, SAML, SSO).</li> <li>Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, data modeling, observability, reliability, performance, and security.</li> <li>Experience handling sensitive data and building systems where privacy, security, and compliance are architectural requirements.</li> <li>Demonstrated success delivering 0-to-1 products or major platform initiatives in environments with significant ambiguity.</li> <li>Proven ability to influence technical direction, mentor engineers, and lead through collaboration rather than authority.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Domain Experience We Value (Bonus if You Have It)</strong></h3> <p>We recognize that exceptional engineers often bring deep expertise in one domain rather than every area listed below.</p> <p>Candidates are not expected to have experience across all of the areas listed below. We welcome engineers from a variety of backgrounds w