Software Developer (Casper Team)

Acuity Insights

14h•$120,000 - $155,000•Remote

About The Position

Acuity Insights is seeking two Software Developers, one Intermediate and one Senior, to join the Casper team. Casper is a high-scale product used globally for admissions decisions, evaluating applicants beyond academic metrics. This role involves working on a mature, revenue-critical product that is actively evolving, with a mix of maintaining existing systems and building new capabilities. The work is complex and consequential, especially as AI reshapes applicant preparation and test integrity. Developers will contribute across the stack, including core areas like authentication, payments, test delivery, scoring, and production support. The team values progress over perfection and uses AI tools as part of their daily workflow. The role requires comfort with JavaScript/TypeScript, navigating evolving codebases, and understanding system trade-offs. Developers will be involved in upgrade, stability, and reliability work, as well as product evolution such as score evolution, test integrity in an AI world, improving result interpretation, and supporting complex program structures. On-call responsibilities for live test sessions are also expected.

Requirements

Actively working in JavaScript or TypeScript in production today.
Comfortable navigating different patterns and approaches in a codebase with over a decade of evolution.
Comfortable reading before rewriting, understanding context before changing direction.
Making improvements that move the system forward without slowing the team down.
Comfortable with backend-heavy work, understanding how data flows through a system, how services interact, and what can go wrong in production.
Treat testing and quality as part of the system, not something that happens at the end.
Experience with or have helped improve testing approaches in real environments.
Use AI tools (Copilot, Codex, Claude) as part of their day-to-day workflow.
Collaborate directly, ask questions, share context, and don’t wait for perfect clarity before moving forward.
Care about the outcome, not just the implementation; want to understand why something matters.
Mid-to-upper intermediate developers (for Intermediate role).
Experience working on systems that are already in use, where reliability matters and changes have real impact.
Comfortable stepping into codebases they didn’t write, making sense of them quickly, and improving them without needing to start over.
Think in trade-offs; know when to refactor and when to leave something alone.
Contribute to system design and help the team think through how new work fits into what already exists (Senior role).
Lead or co-lead more complex backend-heavy initiatives (Senior role).
Define how the team approaches testing in a mature system (unit, integration, end-to-end) (Senior role).

Nice To Haves

Experience with Meteor and MongoDB.

Responsibilities

Upgrade, stability, and reliability work, moving Casper onto supported versions of key technologies like Meteor and MongoDB.
Contribute to product-oriented work, evolving Casper in response to changing market needs.
Work on score evolution, including how scores are calculated, processed, and presented.
Design systems for test integrity in an AI world, detecting, deterring, and responding to policy violations.
Improve how programs interpret results, enhancing analytics and score presentation for clearer decisions.
Support more complex program structures, such as institutions with multiple campuses and geographies.
Contribute across the stack and across domains, including authentication, payments, test delivery, scoring, alerts, and production support.
Improve code quality and engineering patterns through reviews, pairing, and example.
Strengthen the team's approach to testing and reliability.
Plan and validate production changes, including upgrades and breaking changes.
Mentor developers who are earlier in their growth (Senior role).
Own parts of upgrade and stability work, contributing to bug fixes and small improvements (Intermediate role).
Own larger pieces of work end-to-end and become a go-to person for parts of the system (Intermediate role).
Contribute to how work is shaped, not just implemented (Intermediate role).