Senior Software Engineer, Full Stack

Join the mission to end education inequity. Build software at DonorsChoose that empowers frontline teachers to get the resources they need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

DonorsChoose is looking for an energetic, collaborative, and self-motivated full stack senior software engineer to improve our unique philanthropic marketplace. You will play a central role in an agile non-profit organization that is serious about technology. Our twelve-person Engineering team builds software using IntelliJ on macOS, Java, Spring, Postgres, React, GitHub, Bamboo, and AWS.

About DonorsChoose

DonorsChoose engages the public in public schools by giving people a simple, accountable, and personal way to address educational inequity. In this clip, board member Stephen Colbert tells our story.

To date, teachers at 87% of all the public schools in America have posted classroom project requests on our site. Projects range from paper and markers for a poetry writing unit to violins for a school recital. More than 4 million “citizen philanthropists” have supported such projects, channeling books, field trips, technology, and other resources to more than 40 million students nationwide. In all, we’ve generated $1 billion for learning experiences designed by our country’s most dedicated public school teachers.

GOOD Magazine highlighted us as one of 30 Places We Want to Work, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Through its dedicated team and culture, DonorsChoose earned recognition as the #1 "Best Nonprofit to Work For" by the Nonprofit Times.

About the Team

The Product, Engineering, and Data team at DonorsChoose does important mission-driven work, helping to address educational inequity in US public schools, but we operate more like a fast-paced startup than a traditional nonprofit. The full stack engineer will join our team (12 Engineering, 6 Product, 4 Data) to build features for our user base of donors, public school teachers and our staff, directly impacting the educational outcomes for students across the US.

About the Role

What you’ll do:

• Provide technical advice and weigh in on technical decisions. 
• Take initiative to identify and solve important technical problems.
• Estimate and deliver on rapid implementation schedules—without compromising smart development goals and principles—to build web functionality that is functional, fast, and scalable.
• Design, implement, and maintain new functionality for the 900,000 active teachers and donors who depend on our site every year.
• Keep a high-volume, multi-faceted web system running by troubleshooting and fixing critical bugs.
• Work on features end-to-end including server-side, database, and front-end components.
• Clarify and produce technical specifications with nontechnical stakeholders, either by yourself or in collaboration with our product team.

Our ideal candidate is/has:

• A software engineer with at least 5+ years of development experience.
• Hands-on development using Java as the primary development language.
• Skilled in MVC framework, SQL, React and Javascript.
• A top-notch contributor who will be comfortable in our startup atmosphere and eager to play a key technical role on a small, dedicated team.
• A clear and friendly communicator.
• An excellent problem solver who is excited to take on diverse development challenges.
• Committed to taking ownership of their work and having an eye for detail throughout the web engineering lifecycle.
• Comfortable self-managing in a fast-paced environment.
• Passionate about delivering high-quality web functionality with attention to the health of the overall codebase.
• Ability to work on all parts of the stack from creating/modifying database tables, to back-end server coding to front-end development.
• Experienced in building robust functionality for commercial web sites and applications.
• Experienced in integrating 3rd-party web applications, services, and components.
• Nice to have:
• Experience with O/R mapping tools like Hibernate.
• Experience with Spring.
• HTML, CSS.
• Experience with AWS and Kubernetes

Compensation and Benefits

Compensation for this role is competitive with equivalent technical roles at other nonprofits of our size. In addition, we offer full-time staff 25 paid vacation days per year and 11 paid holidays, a rich employer-paid individual and family health plan, annual professional development stipend, and casual and flexible work environment. To learn more about what it is like to work for DonorsChoose, visit our careers page. 

In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, candidates from Colorado may inquire about the salary range for this role by completing this form. A member of our Talent team will contact you with more information.

Hybrid Workplace and Other Details

In this role, you’ll have the option to work a flexible hybrid schedule in our NYC office, or to work fully remotely within the United States.

DonorsChoose is a fully vaccinated workplace and all new employees, regardless of their work location, will be asked to share proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 within two weeks of their hire date or request an exemption from this policy due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief or practice.

To Apply

Submit your application online. In your application, tell us a little bit about your favorite teacher or subject in school! Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until this position is filled.

A Final Note

The DonorsChoose team works toward a nation where students in every community have the resources needed for an excellent education. To do this, we hire and support a diverse team of the best and the brightest talent available.

We are an organization increasingly representative of the varied races and ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, religious and political beliefs, and abilities that comprise our nation. DonorsChoose focuses on attracting, retaining, and advancing diverse talent because it makes us more effective, high-performing, creative, and resilient.

If you are passionate about our mission, highly skilled in your field, and looking for a place where you can bring all of yourself to work, we want you.