Junior Full-Stack Software Engineer

CommonLit is a nonprofit EdTech organization dedicated to providing high-quality literacy instruction to low-income students and students of color to prepare them for success in college and careers. We operate a free online reading and writing program, www.commonlit.org, that is used by millions of teachers and students worldwide each month. We are a quickly growing team of passionate professionals - many of whom are former teachers. Our team is now almost 100 full-time employees spread across ~20 states.

Our small (ten-member) engineering team works in a collaborative, high-trust environment where we ship great software to power CommonLit's curriculum and to assist teachers in fostering and assessing their students' growth. As a Junior Software Engineer, you'll contribute to projects with your own code, review teammates' work, and advance CommonLit's mission.

Our team is a group of life-long learners. We value sharing new ideas, lifting each other up, and building reliable, secure, and performant software that teachers can rely on in the high-stress classroom environment. We have a strong track record hiring early-career engineers and getting them off to fast starts in successful engineering careers.

This is a great opportunity for an early-career engineer to work with a team that invests heavily in team members' growth through close mentoring, our own internal curriculum for study, and a code review process that encourages asking questions.

The Interview Process
Interviewing is a demand on your time. Here's what you can expect from our interview process:
- A call with an engineer to talk about your experience and learn about CommonLit
- A 45-60 minute technical interview over Zoom with two engineers
- Finalists will be invited for a ~4-hour final interview including pairing with CommonLit engineers, a data modeling discussion, and meeting our Product team

Location
CommonLit's engineering team is distributed. Due to restrictions on data access, you must work from within the United States. We have an office in Washington, DC that you can work from if you're in the area, but most of our team is spread out around the country.


Responsibilities

 
Writing high-quality Ruby and React code and tests for our Ruby on Rails application
 
Reviewing your teammates' work in our code review workflow
 
Deploying and operating our Rails application in production


Qualifications

 
0-2+ years of web development experience
 
Familiarity with Ruby on Rails through either prior experience, bootcamp, or a personal project
 
Familiarity with JavaScript, preferably with some kind of front-end framework (React, Vue, etc.)
 
Ability to work comfortably in SQL (we use PostgreSQL)
 
You live in (and will be working from) the United States and have work authorization
 
You have a commitment to improving equity of opportunity for students of color


Compensation and Benefits

 
Salary is $75,000 - $80,000 commensurate with experience.

CommonLit also provides the following benefits:

 
Health, Dental, and Vision insurance
 
401k and retirement services
 
Free telehealth services
 
Pre-tax commuter benefits (for employees based in the metropolitan D.C. area)
 
Small Necessities Leave
 
Full time employees have 15 company holidays, 20 personal leave and paid sick days, and paid parental and family leave.



$75,000 - $80,000 a year
CommonLit's engineering team has a voluntary on-call rotation for off-hours on-call. Engineers are paid a stipend on top of their salary for any weeks spent on the off-hours on-call rotation.
As an equal opportunity employer, CommonLit values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon their race, traits historically associated with race, religion, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy or related medical conditions, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics. If you are a qualified applicant requiring assistance or an accommodation to complete any step of the application process due to a disability, you may contact us at careers@commonlit.org.