Software Engineer II

Ellevation Education; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Ellevation Education is seeking a Software Engineer II to build and operate features that empower educators managing English Learner programs across thousands of districts. You’ll work full-stack—React on the frontend and C#/.NET Core or Python on the backend—and own your work from design through deployment and operations.

At this level you’ll propose paths, prototype when blocked, and contribute to how the squad works in design reviews and ongoing quality.

Qualifications

• 2–4+ years shipping production software.
• Proficient in at least one frontend framework (React/Vue/Angular) and a strongly typed language.
• Experience owning work end-to-end from design to deployment and operations.
• Ability to spike and prototype to answer questions quickly.
• Active participation in design discussions with tradeoffs, complexity, and risk.
• Experience operating production systems with instrumentation and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship product features across React, .NET Core/Python, and supporting infra.
• Present concrete tradeoffs for design decisions — performance, complexity, blast radius, time-to-ship.
• Close questions by spiking, scripting, or prototyping to move the team forward.
• Operate what you build: instrument, respond to alerts, and close issues after release.
• Review code thoughtfully and contribute to the quality bar in PRs.
• Improve systems and tooling iteratively (tech debt, tests, alerts) without being asked.

Skills

End-to-end ownership

React experience

Strongly typed language

Prototype / spike capability

Code review collaboration

Learning ability

Tools

React

C#/.NET Core

Python

AWS

Terraform

Docker

Jenkins

Job description

As a Software Engineer II on an engineering squad at Ellevation, you'll build and operate features that directly shape how educators manage English Learner programs across thousands of school districts. You'll work across a full-stack environment ‑ React on the frontend, C#/.NET Core or Python on the backend ‑ and you'll own your work end-to-end: design, build, ship, and keep it running.

At this level, you're not just executing tickets. You're expected to bring a proposed path when you surface a problem, close open questions by building rather than debating, and leave the systems you touch in better shape than you found them. You'll be a real contributor to how the squad works ‑ in design discussions, in code review, and in the day-to-day quality bar the team holds together.

You might be a great fit if you:

• You bring a proposed path along with the problem — you've found that framing a solution, even a rough one, moves things forward faster than waiting for the perfect answer.
• When something is blocking the team, your instinct is to build the smallest thing that answers the question rather than debate it — a spike, a script, a quick prototype.
• You share real opinions in design discussions — on tradeoffs, complexity, and risk — because you believe teams make better decisions when people actually weigh in.
• You take code review seriously in both directions: you ask until you understand before approving, and you welcome the same rigor on your own work.
• You stay engaged past the merge — on cleanup, follow-up bugs, and alerts that trace back to what you shipped — because you care about the full lifecycle, not just the delivery moment.
• You use AI tools to move faster, and you read and own everything that goes out under your name.

What you'll do:

• Build and ship product features across React, .NET Core/Python, and supporting infrastructure — from design through operation.
• Bring concrete tradeoffs to design discussions — performance, complexity, blast radius, time-to-ship — so the squad is making decisions based on real costs.
• Close open questions by spiking, scripting, or prototyping, keeping the team moving rather than waiting on answers that could be found by building.
• Operate what you build: instrument it, respond to alerts, and close the loop on issues that surface after release.
• Review code thoughtfully — ask questions, push for improvements when they matter, and welcome the same on your own PRs.
• Pick up improvements you notice along the way — tech debt, alerting gaps, missing tests — without waiting to be asked.

What you'll bring:

• 2–4 years shipping production software, with enough end-to-end ownership to know what "done" actually means.
• Fluency in at least one frontend JS framework (React/Vue/Angular), and a strongly typed language (C#/.NET/Python/Go) — and comfort learning across the stack where the work takes you.
• Experience naming tradeoffs concretely rather than just expressing preferences — you've been in design discussions where your perspective shaped the outcome.
• Engineering habits — testing, observability, careful review — that reflect care for the long term, not just the current ticket.
• Some experience operating what you've built: you've debugged production, you know what good instrumentation looks like.
• Some experience with how code gets deployed and runs in production — you understand the path from commit to live, and you know what good instrumentation looks like.

Why Ellevation?

• Working on meaningful challenges that directly impact English Learners.
• Helping define and build the future of internal platforms and developer experience at a mission-driven company.
• Collaborating in a supportive, cross-functional environment.
• Growing personally and professionally as part of a high-performing team.
• Leveraging AI responsibly to accelerate how we build, test, and operate systems.

Frontend: React (with ongoing migration from legacy systems)

Backend: C#/.NET Core (and some .NET Framework legacy) or Python

Infrastructure: AWS, Terraform, CI/CD with Jenkins, Docker

Developer Experience: Internal tooling, repo templates, CI/CD workflows, container-based dev

We don’t expect you to know everything on day one — what matters most is your ability to learn, collaborate, and lead through change.