Lead Full-Stack Engineer

Core responsibilities:

• Partner with Product to improve platform reliability and reduce support load by addressing peak-usage bottlenecks and reworking enrollment, authentication, rostering, and licensing infrastructure
• Own end-to-end system architecture and technical roadmap for CDI's product suite: application, data flows, integrations, and infrastructure
• Contribute hands-on to front-end and back-end code to unblock delivery, lead critical implementations, and resolve production issues
• Drive and operate CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability/monitoring, and alerting
• Establish and cultivate engineering best practices (code review, branching, documentation, security)—providing technical oversight of our agency partner and mentoring incoming junior engineers as the team scales
• Partner closely with Product, Research, and Implementation to translate CDI's evidence-based curricula into scalable, usable digital experiences
• Ensure secure and privacy-conscious handling of user and institutional data; work with Product and Operations to align on compliance and data policies
• Communicate technical choices and tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders

This role creates positive change by building the technical foundation that translates CDI's evidence-based curricula into scalable digital experiences, helping equip the next generation of Americans with skills to communicate and collaborate across lines of difference.

Required skills and experience:

• 8+ years building full-stack web apps with clear ownership of production systems and architecture
• 2+ years of proven tech-lead experience (running a small squad, owning delivery, mentoring engineers)
• Strong front-end and back-end skills (React + TypeScript preferred; Node.js, Python, or Go acceptable)
• History with Next.js (App Router), TailwindCSS, and Auth.js / NextAuth or similar
• Production cloud experience (AWS/GCP/Azure), CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform / Pulumi), automated deployments, and operational runbooks
• Practical experience with NoSQL document stores (DynamoDB, MongoDB or similar) and relational DBs (Postgres or similar)
• Experience unifying and syncing data across siloed systems (ETL/transform, deduplication, reconciliation), building user-sync pipelines (OAuth, webhooks, idempotent syncs), and working with GraphQL & REST integrations
• Strong practices in authentication/authorization and RBAC, encryption, secrets management, and familiarity with privacy/compliance basics
• Implemented logs/metrics/tracing, run incident response and postmortems, and reduced operational risk
• Able to translate product and research requirements into pragmatic technical plans and explain tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders
• Commitment to CDI's mission and to working within a mission-driven non-profit

No specific benefits, compensation, or salary information mentioned in the job description.

The Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI) is a non-partisan non-profit dedicated to equipping the next generation of Americans with the skills to communicate and collaborate across lines of difference. CDI partners with colleges and universities nationwide to offer evidence-based programs that create campus cultures of inquiry and dialogue.