About Scholar Fund

Scholar Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization connecting community needs to opportunities and resources. Primarily, we build technology to remove barriers to scholarships and non-education cash assistance ranging from COVID-19 direct relief, to immigration fee assistance, to childcare subsidies. We have helped students win over $90 million in scholarships through free application essay review and over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic have administered over $171 million in relief funds. Now we’re working to power the next billion dollars in benefit programs. Though not limited to any subset of individuals, our work frequently serves undocumented immigrants, Black and other people of color, and low-income families, among others.

We pride ourselves on being a team of few but exceptional individuals—savvy, conscientious, and wide-eyed—who tackle imposing challenges by thinking critically and creatively about traditional solutions, novel tools, and intimate knowledge of the problem space. We are approximately 40 strong, plus a handful of four-legged friends and small human “coworkers”. We are based primarily out of Seattle, WA and have been a fully remote team from day one.

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The Role

The Engineering team is responsible for developing and maintaining internal and public facing web applications, as well as managing capture, storage, analysis, and security of user-generated and operational data. The team focuses on security, accessibility, and efficient shipping of reliable full stack software products. This role is for a full-stack Software Development Engineer. You will be working primarily with TypeScript, Node, and React to write clean, maintainable, and scalable back-end and front-end code underlying the application intake, review, anti-fraud, and payments systems for multiple multimillion dollar cash grant and subsidy programs. You will be part of a small team as we grow our engineering headcount to 3–4, and will have your fingerprint on virtually all of the core architecture and processes as we grow to serve hundreds of thousands of individuals and families. You will be responsible for:

• Developing familiarity with the full breadth of our code base
• Helping to design a modular cloud service architecture with adaptability to rapidly evolving requirements
• Giving and receiving code reviews with the Director of Engineering and your other teammates
• Developing features, including integrations with 3rd party APIs
• Documenting and maintaining software functionality (TypeScript, React); documenting and maintaining Dev-Ops processes and infrastructure (Google Cloud Platform, Terraform)
• Participating in our contributions to open source projects
• Collaborating with our Engineering, Data Science, Payments, and Customer Support specialists

This role does not entail on-call coverage. If on-call availability becomes necessary at a later date, it will follow a renegotiation of the salary and benefits package to ensure fair compensation.

Skills

• Fluency in TypeScript and React — The vast majority of our code base is TypeScript, and all user interfaces are built with React.
• Familiarity with database basics — We primarily use MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
• Familiarity with API design (REST and/or GraphQL)
• Experience deploying production workloads to Kubernetes or serverless platforms (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Run, or similar)
• Consistent focus on security, and habitual ability to form, update, and manage threat models during development
• Comfort in both collaborative and independent work environments — We are a small, remote engineering team with minimal existing management structure. Our success depends on strong individual initiative while at the same time thoughtfully building processes and practices to support each other as the team grows.
• Experience working in a fast-paced startup environment
• Ability and motivation to communicate with clarity, timeliness, and respect for teammates and clients — We serve undocumented immigrants and individuals and families dealing with financial distress, and our staff represents a diversity of races, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Consciously cultivating trust and consistently examining our role as an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, and inclusive organization is essential to our success.
• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field or comparable experience

Benefits

• $150,000 base salary, with annual pay reviews and transparent compensation updates based on performance
• Work remotely: Live and work wherever you like!
• Multiple health care, vision, dental, and life insurance plans
• Flexible time off to help you relax and recharge. (Unlimited PTO, with mandatory 2 week vacation)
• A 401K with 4% match, so you can invest in your future
• Hardware included: A new laptop for work + a $500 office workspace setup budget