Principal Engineer

Outschool

THE COMPANY
Outschool's mission is to inspire kids to love learning. We believe the best way to do that is by linking learning to kids’ interests, connecting them with others who share those interests, and giving them the autonomy to pick their own path. We provide small group classes that meet over live video chat where learners are connected with teachers and classmates who share their interests. These classes are offered through our marketplace and conducted on our remote learning platform.
Our business is growing explosively and as of August, 500,000 learners have taken more than over 2M class hours. We've more than tripled our team since the beginning of 2020 from 25 to 80 to keep up with growth. We’ve raised $57M since founding with most of that still in the bank. Our sales have grown 2000% in the past year to reach a run-rate of more than $100M.
We're an experienced team with past accomplishments at Airbnb, Square, Apple, Uber, Udemy, Amazon, Wikipedia, Google, and many startups. We came together because we wanted to make a difference in education and saw the opportunity to empower learners, teachers, and parents.
Now, in the face of mass school closures, our product and expertise have become central to many more families, teachers and organizations than ever before. We're committed to access and impact so we founded outschool.org to offer financial assistance to families in need.
THE ROLE 
As a Principal Engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing systems across engineering efforts that we undertake. As part of Outschool’s technical leadership, you’ll be involved in overarching strategic topics while focusing on the operative excellence of our software engineers - ensuring technical consistency and clarity across the engineering teams. You’ll amplify your impact wherein the outcomes of your work move the engineering organization forward in a meaningful way.
CORE RESPONSIBILITIES:
  • Collaborate with key internal stakeholders in the engineering organization and business
  • Advocate/enforce best practices for performance, reliability, scalability, security, and reusability at the organization level
  • Be a hands-on architect with a good understanding of how the various systems and components connect and interact
  • Write code to implement key components, patterns, systems, and prototypes that guide the technical direction of the team
  • Assess risks, make trade-offs, and offer a solution over others
  • Provide domain expertise and engineering insight to guide designs, accelerate project decision making, and maintain oversight of technical execution
  • Bring industry-wide perspective, knowledge of existing resources and tools, and ability to discover new ones as needed in order to make effective build/buy recommendations
DESIRED EXPERIENCE & SKILLS:
  • Has strong interpersonal communication and collaboration skills with an ability to build trust and alignment across both engineering and multi-functional organizations to meet the business goals of Outschool
  • Has over 15 years of experience building software applications at scale
  • Has a deep expertise in some core aspects of our stack: modern JavaScript/TypeScript: React, GraphQL/Apollo, Python data pipelines, Node/Express backed by PostgreSQL and AWS
  • Understands the importance of code quality, how to foster code quality behaviors within a team, and how to effectively manage technical debt
  • Has been successful designing, shipping and evolving systems as well as guiding teams through system and software architectural decisions
  • Has experience in long term planning and execution of all technical aspects of our technology stack
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
  • Previous work in Ed Tech companies
  • Previous work at high-growth startups
OUTSCHOOL CARES:
  • Shared Financial Success: Competitive salaries, stock options, and a 401k that makes saving for retirement easier.
  • Health and Wellness: Comprehensive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance coverage options for employees and their families. Our medical benefits include fertility and family planning coverage. We also provide employees with online access to coaching and therapy sessions through our partner, ModernHealth.
  • PTO and Family Benefits: PTO and family leave enable our team to take the time that we need to recharge, relax, and spend time with family and friends.
  • Remote First: With over 50% of our team distributed across the US and Canada, we create a remote culture through expensable weekly meals, virtual events, expensable home office setup, and internet allowance.
  • Lifelong Learners: Annual budgets to self-direct our professional development as well as DEI learning. There’s also a budget for employees’ learners to take classes on Outschool!
  • Community Impact: Outschool matches employee donations to established 501c3s, and has committed to donating $3M to Outschool.org non-profit programs.
Outschool is an equal opportunity employer. We view diversity as a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience.
Outschool is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to disabled veterans and applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance due to a disability, you may contact us at recruiting@outschool.com.
Must be a citizen or legal resident of the U.S. or Canada and reside in U.S. or Canada.
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