Staff Software Engineer (AI / Fullstack) (Founding Team)

Help build the technical foundation for an AI-powered platform helping students explore careers and imagine their futures.

About Hope Street Group

Hope Street Group is a mission-driven nonprofit building AI-powered tools that helps middle and high school students explore careers and plan their futures.

The Hope Street Platform is a series of ai enhanced classroom quests that create delight for both students and teachers.

We launched our platform in January and are now scaling toward 10,000+ classrooms.

Engineering at Hope Street Group works directly with product, curriculum, and school partners. We are a small team building technology that will directly shape how students explore careers nationwide.

The Role

We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join our founding engineering team.

This role is roughly

~70% hands-on engineering

~30% architecture, mentorship, and technical leadership

You will work closely with our founding engineer and CTO to scale the Hope Street platform and build the systems that power AI-driven career exploration for students across the country.

This is the most senior individual contributor role on our engineering team. You will own systems, not just tickets.

What You’ll Work On

Backend & Infrastructure

Our backend stack includes AWS and Supabase.

You will help design and evolve systems including:
• AWS Lambda functions and backend services
• SQS-based processing pipelines
• Supabase (PostgreSQL, RLS policies, Edge Functions, pgvector)
• Data systems supporting career exploration and student interactions

Teacher App (React / TypeScript)

Our teacher dashboard helps educators manage classroom experiences.

You will:
• Guide architecture and patterns across the React codebase
• Review and mentor frontend development
• Contribute directly to features and improvements

AI / LLM Systems

Hope Street uses AI to power career conversations and interactive learning.

You will help design and maintain:
• Prompt systems for AI career professionals
• Moderation and safety layers
• Retrieval and context systems (RAG pipelines)
• Infrastructure for scaling AI-powered interactions across schools

Student App (Flutter / Dart)

Hope Street’s student experience is built with Flutter for mobile and web.

You will help lead development of:
• AI-powered student conversations with career professionals
• The quest system that powers our interactive career experiences
• The data layer and state management across platforms
• Cross-platform deployment to iOS, Android, and web

What You Bring

Technical Experience
• 6+ years professional software engineering experience
• Strong full-stack engineering skills
• Experience with either React + TypeScript and Flutter/Dart
• Real experience working with AWS infrastructure (Lambda, queues, IAM)
• Experience building on Supabase and PostgreSQL
• Experience building production AI/LLM features

Product Mindset
• You understand tradeoffs between speed, scale, and maintainability
• You’ve shipped entire platforms used by real users
• You thrive in ambiguity and early stage growth

Engineering Leadership
• Comfortable owning architecture decisions
• Strong code review and mentoring habits
• Strong collaborator with product, design, and non-technical partners

Nice to Have
• Experience in education technology or K–12 systems
• Mobile app deployment experience (iOS or Android)
• Experience designing RAG pipelines or LLM infrastructure
• Experience working in early-stage startups or small engineering teams

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 6 months you will likely:
• Ship major improvements to the Hope Street student experience
• Strengthen the architecture of our backend platform
• Help scale the system to support thousands of classrooms
• Raise the bar for engineering quality and technical decision-making

Why Join
• Build technology that directly impacts middle and high school students
• Work on meaningful AI applications in education
• Join a small team with real product ownership
• Help shape the engineering culture of a growing platform
• Collaborate closely with product, curriculum, and school partners

Our Values

Our work is guided by four principles that shape how we build products, collaborate as a team, and serve students.

Inclusivity

Every student deserves access to meaningful career exploration regardless of background, identity, or ZIP code. We design technology that helps students feel seen, supported, and capable of imagining new possibilities. Internally, we build a culture where different perspectives are welcomed and respected.

Inspiration

We want students to feel excited about their future when they use Hope Street. That means building experiences that spark curiosity, confidence, and creativity. Inspiration starts with our own work—we care deeply about the quality and impact of what we build.

Curiosity

We approach problems with a learning mindset. We experiment, ask questions, and explore what’s possible with emerging technologies like AI. Curiosity helps us build better systems and better learning experiences.

Ambition

We aim to build the best career exploration platform in the country. That requires bold thinking, high standards, and a willingness to tackle difficult problems. Our ambition is grounded in humility and accountability to the students and educators we serve.

Benefits & Perks

We’re building a mission-driven organization where people can do meaningful work without burning out.

Flexible PTO

Take time when you need it. We trust our team to balance rest and responsibility, and we encourage taking real breaks to recharge.

Medical & Dental Insurance

We offer competitive medical and dental plans to support your health and peace of mind.

401(k) Retirement Plan with Matching

As a nonprofit, we offer a 401(k) retirement program with employer matching.

Remote-First Team

Our team is distributed across the United States. We work remotely and collaborate during shared working hours.

Sustainable Pace

We move quickly but intentionally. We aim for high-impact work without the burnout cycles common in many startups.

Mission-Driven Work

Everything you build supports real middle and high school students exploring careers, building skills, and imagining their futures.

How to Apply

Please be ready to discuss a recent project or code sample that reflects how you think about engineering problems. We’ll ask you to walk through your approach and the decisions behind it.

Hope Street Group is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse teams build better products for diverse students.