Senior Full-Stack Engineer – Platform

• Company:  Early Bird College Inc
• Location: Remote / hybrid
• Type: Engineer 

 

About Early Bird College Inc.

early bird™is a dynamic, mission-driven startup revolutionizing college planning for students and families. We believe in leveling the playing field and democratizing college admissions. Our goal is to make the college experience more accessible, transparent, and affordable. We bulit a platform that empowers users with critical information and tools to navigate the complex and fragmented college admissions landscape in the United States. 

 

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Fullstack Engineer to own the responsibilities and daily activities of platform maintenance and ongoing engineering needs . This is a rare opportunity to be an instrumental member of a fast-paced startup, directly contributing to a product with immense social impact. As a core team member, you will participate in architecture, scale systems, lead and contribute to ongoing platform enhancements, development and maintenance, and help shape our AI-integrated ecosystem. 

What you’ll do: You will join an operating platform at an important modernization and growth stage. Near-term work includes helping evolve our existing Django platform, migrating remaining web experiences into our React architecture, strengthening reporting and data accessibility, improving platform reliability, and building the technical foundation for our next generation of AI-assisted college-planning experiences.

 

Responsibilities include:

Continuing to build out the functionality of the platform 

• Lead the ongoing development of our platform using Django, React, React Native, AWS, and our security stack. 
• Support both iOS + Android as well as web browsers on all devices.
• Design and build backend infrastructure, APIs, data lifecycles, data models and databases, reporting, and integrations with 3rd party services (e.g., admissions data, payment platforms, notifications, etc)
• Implement role specific user experiences that are intuitive and emotionally supportive across devices.
• Lay the groundwork for current and future AI features.
• Help build the application architecture supporting Robin and future AI-assisted experiences, including user-context retrieval, workflow/tool integration, structured outputs, guardrails, evaluation, observability and human escalation where appropriate.
• Creating and maintaining a seamless front-end (UI/UX) user experience throughout the ecosystem, across devices, and all user types.
• Ensure performance and responsiveness throughout the ecosystem.
• Help complete the modernization of legacy web experiences, including migration of functionality from WordPress into the React/Django application ecosystem.
• Building reliable internal reporting, administrative tooling and data-access capabilities so operational teams can answer business questions and execute routine workflows without engineering intervention.

Architect the Ecosystem

• Define the technical architecture that supports multiple user types, workflows and secure data access, ensuring scalability, modularity, and maintainability.
• Make smart decisions about infrastructure, data storage, and services, balancing speed with long term sustainability.
• Work with founders to translate market feedback and product strategy into technical execution.
• Identify opportunities where AI/ML can enhance user value, and guide experimentation or integration efforts as needed.

Set up Development Processes

• Contribute to best practices in building and maintaining standards and code quality, version control, branching workflows, CI/CD, and feature flags.
• Set up instrumentation, logging, and error reporting to ensure platform stability and maintenance capacity.
• Ensure scalability and sustainability.
• Optimize for future team growth, laying the groundwork for additional engineers.
• Contribute to SOP mapping
• Build and maintain appropriate unit, integration and end-to-end automated testing, ensuring critical workflows are validated before production deployment.

Ensure Compliance & Data Integrity

• Build with education specific privacy standards in mind (FERPA, COPPA).
  • Implement privacy-by-design and security controls supporting Early Bird’s education and youth-data compliance requirements, including age-aware consent, data minimization, authorization, audit logging, secure storage and appropriate handling of student information. Familiarity with FERPA, COPPA and similar privacy frameworks is preferred.
• Prioritize user data protection and platform security.
• Implement role-based access, secure storage, encryption, and user consent flows.

Instrument, Learn, and Iterate

• Set up analytics (e.g., Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment) to capture user behavior and drive insights.
• Collaborate on A/B testing strategies and feedback loops and improve engagement and outcomes.

Collaborate & Lead

• Work closely with the founding team to prioritize features and deliver milestones.
• Contribute to product roadmap decisions with a technical and user-first lens. 
• Help define a culture of engineering excellence and assist in growing the technical team post launch. 

 

Who You Are:

You’re a team player and builder who thrives in ambiguity, and cares deeply about impact. You think in terms of systems, experiences, and what people need, and you love to make them real.

Personal Skills

• Passionate and proactive with a genuine interest in our mission.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a knack for turning complex challenges into elegant solutions
• Agile and open mindset, willing and able to work in a fast-paced, iterative development environment.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative spirit, eager to work as part of our small, dedicated team.
• Ability to thrive in an early-stage, ambiguous, fast-paced startup environment.

 

Experience

• 5+ years of fullstack software development experience. 
• Backend experience including API design, cloud architecture, data modeling and database management (Firebase, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB), and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience building production applications with React and TypeScript. Experience with React Native or another modern cross-platform mobile framework is strongly preferred.
• Experience modernizing or incrementally migrating legacy applications without disrupting production users is strongly preferred.
• Solid understanding of responsive design and cross-platform UX challenges.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset.
• Experience implementing analytics, user tracking, and experimentation frameworks.
• Familiarity with operational readiness and DevOps hygiene 
• Experience integrating LLMs or AI services into production applications is strongly preferred; experience with retrieval, tool calling, evaluations, workflow orchestration or AI observability is a plus.

 

Bonus Points

• Experience in EdTech, college admissions, or youth/parent focused platforms.
• Knowledge of education compliance regulations (FERPA, COPPA).
• Experience with instrumentation, analytics, and A/B testing tools.
• Prior involvement in a startup as a founding engineer or early-stage builder
• Exposure to Ai/ML development tools or services (e.g., LLMs, embeddings, personalization algorithms).
• Experience building modular or event driven platforms.

 

What We Offer

1. Equity: Equity position in a promising early-stage startup, aligning your success directly with the company’s growth.
2. Compensation: Monthly compensation plan.
3. Mission & Impact: Be part of a company that’s leveling the playing field and disrupting the college admissions business, helping families navigate higher education with success.  
4. Autonomy & Ownership: A chance to contribute and take significant ownership of the development roadmap and execution.
5. Collaborative Environment: Work directly with passionate founders in a supportive and agile setting.
6. High Growth Trajectory: With the complexity within the college admissions process the market needs our solution. Join at a high impact moment before launch, with opportunities to lead engineering, scale the platform, and shape the company’s future. 

 

How to Apply
If you are eager to make a significant impact and join us, we encourage you to apply. Please send your resume, a brief cover letter explaining your interest in early bird™, and links to your portfolio or relevant projects to he***@**************ge.com.