About Stellic

Remember the days when you were navigating your academic path — the feeling of being lost, unsure of which courses to take, or uncertain about your graduation timeline? At Stellic, we get it because our journey started just like yours. Born out of the challenges faced by international students at Carnegie Mellon, we’ve grown into a movement that’s reshaping the future of education by addressing one of higher education’s biggest challenges: the $200B dropout crisis.

Today, we are partnered with universities across 7 countries — including top institutions like Cornell, Columbia University, and Ohio State University — to empower 1M+ students to take control of their academic journey with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Our platform gives students the tools they need to plan ahead, stay on track, and succeed, from day one through graduation.

At Stellic, we believe in the power of personalized education, and our culture thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the passion to solve meaningful problems. Your ideas will have a real-world impact, as you work alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry to reimagine what education can be. Join us; together, we’ll help millions of students worldwide own their educational future.

Don’t take our word for it, see it for yourself!

• "Stellic cut down 2 hours of brainpower before registration to just 30 minutes!" – Rising Senior
• "I noticed that when I was in meetings with my advisor after we got Stellic, we could spend more time talking about career paths, the future, and what made sense for me from a professional standpoint" - Rising Senior
• "One of the key things about Stellic is that I can have it open, my advisor can also have it open and see exactly what I’m looking at. And I don’t have to hope and pray that they remember who I am." – Rising Junior
• "Just had the most AMAZING advising session...a student was changing majors and they built a new plan to show her parents within minutes. She was beaming (and so was I!)...this is incredible to use" - Advisor
• "Stellic has caused us to be more inspired about the work that we do. Having a platform that is agile, responsive, flexible and shows potential for moving forward - and a collaborative team approach - has been remarkable." - Administrator

What Sets Stellic Engineers Apart

Stellic engineers combine curiosity, creativity, and business acumen with the ability to deliver pragmatic solutions quickly and with high quality. Our mission is to help students, and our engineers keep this goal in mind as they build.

Why This role

Stellic is at a pivotal point. Having proven strong product-market fit and maintained high customer NPS ratings, we are preparing for the next phase of growth. Some parts of our architecture are outdated, yet we have ambitious roadmaps to improve students' lives worldwide. We need a leader to drive backend upgrades and elevate our engineering team's capabilities to deliver new features and improvements.

What you'll do:

1. Work closely with founders and product managers to understand the "Why" behind each platform capability
2. Drive alignment on engineering and product priorities
3. Design and lead scalable backend architectures for mission-critical applications
4. Build and maintain APIs to handle complex logic and data flows
5. Optimize database schemas and queries for large data volumes
6. Identify and implement system performance and reliability improvements
7. Mentor engineers in best practices, design patterns, and code quality
8. Design testing strategies and ensure high-quality releases

What you'll need:

1. 5+ years of experience as a backend engineer at scale
2. Strong ownership and leadership skills
3. Curiosity, empathy, and dedication to engineering craft
4. Ability to plan and manage technical projects
5. Problem-solving skills and mentorship ability
6. Excellent communication skills for cross-team collaboration

What we need from you:

1. Deep experience with backend development using Python/Django (plus)
2. Experience with ORMs, REST APIs, background jobs, real-time streaming (plus)
3. Knowledge of multi-tenant architectures
4. Cloud deployment expertise, especially AWS (plus)
5. Proficiency in SQL and database optimization (PostgreSQL preferred)
6. Experience with secure authentication systems
7. Knowledge of search engines like ElasticSearch (plus)
8. Experience with asynchronous programming and messaging systems
9. API design, documentation, and versioning skills
10. Understanding of testing, CI/CD, and observability tools (AWS CodeDeploy, Sentry, Grafana, Prometheus, etc.)
11. Data pipeline management experience (Dagster, Airflow, etc.)

What Tech We Use:

Our current stack includes:

• Languages: Python, SQL, Shell
• Frameworks: Django, Angular, React, Remix
• Databases: PostgreSQL
• Version control: Git (GitHub)
• Cloud: AWS
• Deployment: AWS CodeDeploy

Why Join

• Be part of a customer-focused team addressing core issues in higher education
• Opportunity to build and lead a team at a growing organization
• Collaborate with thought leaders in education and SaaS
• Culture of ownership and innovation
• Stock options in a Series A startup
• Flexible, outcome-oriented culture
• Comprehensive benefits: medical, dental, vision, life insurance, 401K, commuter benefits
• Annual international retreats

Compensation: $160,000 - $200,000 base salary plus equity

Work location: Must work in-office in the Bay Area 3 days/week

Stellic is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We value diversity and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.