Progress Lead

Stellic • San Mateo, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Stellic is seeking a Progress Lead to take ownership of the technical direction for their Degree Progress product. This role involves transitioning the product's architecture from a search-based system to a SAT solver-driven approach, requiring a technical leader capable of translating algorithmic power into a trustworthy product for students and universities. The Progress team is responsible for Stellic's Degree Progress product, which assists students and administrators in tracking progress towards degree requirements and academic goals. The team is divided into two key areas: Compute, focusing on the core algorithm and result accuracy, and Product, concentrating on the application, validation, and presentation of these results in a user-friendly manner. The Progress Lead will manage the entire team, collaborating closely with the algorithms lead. The team's current priorities include enhancing system scalability and reliability, with a significant focus on developing specialized testing frameworks to validate complex and diverse degree requirements.

Requirements

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience operating at scale.
• Track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead.
• Strong intuition for designing systems that produce correct, explainable outcomes in ambiguous or edge-case-heavy domains.
• Experience building or working with purpose-built testing frameworks for validating complex business logic.
• Ability to reason about and debug systems where correctness verification is non-trivial.
• Expertise building highly optimized, robust systems at scale.
• Deep experience with backend engineering using high-level programming languages and frameworks.
• Comfort with asynchronous / event-based architectures.
• Clear and effective communication skills for collaborating with product, design, and customer-facing teams.
• Deep curiosity, customer empathy, and commitment to engineering as a craft.

Responsibilities

• Own the Degree Progress systems end-to-end, orchestrating and operationalizing SAT solver results into user-facing experiences.
• Apply, validate, and present degree progress outcomes in a way that students and advisors can trust.
• Partner closely with the algorithms lead to ensure seamless integration between compute outputs and product behavior across all edge cases.
• Design and implement purpose-built testing infrastructure to validate complex and highly variable degree requirements.
• Ensure the system delivers reliable, explainable outcomes with clear guarantees around performance and behavior.
• Drive alignment on engineering-driven priorities alongside product priorities.
• Define and mentor on best practices, design patterns, and code quality to drive engineering excellence.
• Mentor junior developers.

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Meaningful equity
• Health insurance with Stellic covering 99% of your premium and 75% for dependents
• 401(k)
• Commuter benefits
• Annual international retreats

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees