Technical Lead/Staff Engineer

ABOUT BASTA

First-generation college students have what it takes to bring immense value to the workforce, but often face systemic barriers in professional knowledge, networks, and opportunity. More than half of recent grads are underemployed, with most projected to remain underemployed 10+ years after graduation. Basta is closing the employment gap for first-generation students, enabling them to secure great jobs, launch careers, and change the face of leadership in the workforce.

Since 2016, we have built innovative, data-driven solutions ensuring students convert their hard-earned degrees into a great first job. Through AI-enabled, personalized career preparation and partnerships with top employers, we are accelerating the professional journey of thousands of first-gen students at 300 campuses…and counting! Basta participants are now thriving in their first jobs at Bloomberg, Snap Inc., Citi, DonorsChoose, and over 100 other companies.

ABOUT THE STAFF ENGINEER ROLE

You’ll step into a pivotal role shaping the technical direction of our AI-powered Seekr Adaptive platform — the product at the heart of our mission to close opportunity gaps for first-generation college students.

As our Technical Lead, this is the most senior full-time engineering role at Basta to date. You’ll be hands-on in building complex systems, but equally important, you’ll lead as a technical mentor, project driver, and culture-setter. With strong contract principal engineers in place on backend and infrastructure, we’re looking for someone who brings deep expertise in frontend engineering while still operating full-stack. You’ll ensure our platform delivers polished, performant, and scalable user experiences, and you’ll model what excellence looks like across design, code quality, and architectural thinking.

This is a high-leverage, hands-on role focused on technical execution, systems thinking, and design leadership. You operate as force multipliers — shaping major technical initiatives, elevating engineering quality across the team, and providing architectural guidance that unlocks product velocity. You lead by example through code, documentation, and coaching, and are trusted partners to product and design peers.

You will exhibit leadership through influence: mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, coordinating with cross-functional partners, and driving technical clarity across projects. You take ownership of critical projects and act as technical stewards for major initiatives. You help unblock teams, bring structure to ambiguity, and contribute to a culture of pragmatic decision-making, AI-native best practices, and continuous learning.

You will do this by:

• Lead and ship: Own the technical delivery of major platform milestones — from high-level design to production-ready code.
• Front-end leadership: Set patterns and standards for React, Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind development, ensuring our user-facing experience is accessible, performant, and scalable.
• Full-stack execution: Work across Python/FastAPI services, APIs, and cloud-native infrastructure to deliver end-to-end functionality.
• Architect for scale: Define patterns, data flows, and service boundaries that keep systems reliable and flexible as the product grows.
• Mentor & elevate: Guide mid- and junior-level engineers via design reviews, pairing, and architectural coaching — raising the bar for technical decision-making and execution.
• Collaborate across functions: Partner closely with product, design, data and other engineers to de-risk complex initiatives, clarify milestones, and ensure alignment.
• Shape technical culture: Influence engineering practices, hiring, and onboarding by modeling craftsmanship, curiosity, and accountability.
• Drive innovation: Contribute to AI-native features such as LLM-powered workflows, agentic tools, and vector search, while helping define the guardrails for reliable, responsible integration.

SUCCESS IN STAFF ENGINEER ROLE LOOKS LIKE:

You are a force multiplier for the team: clearing ambiguity, increasing execution speed, and building the AI-native infrastructure that powers BASTA’s next chapter. You don’t just build great systems — you make everyone around you better.

• You lead the technical delivery of major platform milestones and unlock smarter, faster iteration
• You reduce unnecessary complexity by introducing reusable, composable patterns
• The engineering team moves faster and with more clarity because of your influence.
• Our front-end stack is modern, performant, and scalable, with reusable, composable patterns that reduce unnecessary complexity.
• Junior and mid-level engineers are growing faster thanks to your mentorship.
• You raise the bar for AI integration, scalability, and engineering effectiveness

YOU COULD BE OUR STAFF ENGINEER IF:

This is a high-impact, technical role ideal for a senior individual contributor who thrives on solving complex technical problems and leading through influence rather than authority. You may have experience as a tech lead or even as a hands-on engineering manager, but are looking to return to a role where you can go deep into systems design, lead initiatives from the front, and shape architecture and engineering practices across a team — without formal people management responsibilities.

• You bring 8–10+ years of full-stack engineering experience, including significant leadership experience in product-driven teams.
• You have deep expertise in modern frontend development (React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind) and a strong grasp of backend technologies (Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL/MongoDB)
• You’re fluent in React, Next.js, TypeScript, FastAPI, PostgreSQL/MongoDB, and cloud-native deployment (AWS, Docker, Terraform)
• You’ve led initiatives where user experience, frontend quality, scalability, and performance were mission-critical
• You’ve shipped production features powered by AI/LLMs or have architected data-rich, interactive systems.
• You can balance hands-on coding with technical leadership: breaking down projects, coaching peers, and setting direction without formal management authority.
• You’re skilled at communicating complex technical tradeoffs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• You thrive in environments where you can go deep technically while also shaping team culture, and you’re motivated by work that creates real social impact.

The Tangible Good

Basta is a remote-first hybrid organization. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package* which includes medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, retirement matching, paid parental leave, and more. We also offer a generous paid time off policy, including 15 paid vacation days (20 paid vacation days after your first year), all federal holidays, summer Friday half-days and an end of year shutdown annually.

• Basta reserves the right to change benefits at any time according to business need.
• *Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. Basta is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.
• *Basta does not currently cover the cost of relocation.