Tech Lead, Foundations

Clasp

2d • $165,000 - $185,000 • Remote

About The Position

Clasp is a venture-backed, mission-driven startup transforming access to education and career pathways. We are revolutionizing the way employers attract and retain critical talent and the way colleges and universities support their students through education financing, all while tackling the student debt crisis. We like to think of ourselves as more than a fintech; we're a catalyst for economic mobility.

A Forbes Fintech 50 company, portfolio company of SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management, the largest HR organization out there!) and recipient of "Startup of the Year" by StartUp Boston, Clasp is driven by our commitment to social impact and innovation.

Our work spans two business lines:
Clasp Talent helps healthcare employers attract and retain critical talent by connecting them with diverse candidates and using student loan repayment as a powerful recruiting and retention tool. We meaningfully connect employers, educational institutions, and learners to drive mutual benefit.
Clasp Finance equips colleges and universities with lending technology to launch and operate their own private student loan programs, enabling schools to step in and support their students directly with financial aid.

Join us on our journey to give power to learners and unlock fulfilling careers that drive positive change in their communities and beyond.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent bootcamp or upskilling program experience.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent, including time leading technical direction for a team or a shared platform, at a SaaS startup or similar environment.
• Experience designing APIs and integration patterns used by other teams or external partners, with attention to contracts, backward compatibility, and documentation.
• Strong fluency in Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI, or similar) and TypeScript/JavaScript (React, Next.js), and a PostgreSQL-backed data model.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar), cloud infrastructure (AWS or Google Cloud), infrastructure as code, and production monitoring.
• Experience working with Product and Compliance or Security teams in financial services or another regulated environment.
• AI-native in your workflow: you use coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, etc.) as a real force multiplier and are excited about what AI unlocks for engineering.
• Strong written and verbal communication. You can articulate technical tradeoffs, align stakeholders, and make sound decisions under ambiguity.
• A genuine interest in technology that expands access to education and economic mobility.

Nice To Haves

• Hands-on experience designing and operating identity and access systems: authentication, SSO (SAML, OIDC, OAuth), user provisioning (e.g., SCIM), and role-based permissions.
• Experience building notification or messaging systems (transactional email, templating, preferences, delivery tracking, retries) or similar event-driven infrastructure.
• Experience building internal platform or "paved road" capabilities that multiple product teams adopt.
• Experience with enterprise customers' identity requirements (IdP integrations, domain verification, just-in-time provisioning).
• Familiarity with HRIS or ATS integrations, or with education data standards.
• Experience with data privacy and security frameworks (SOC 2, FERPA, GLBA) and their technical implications.
• Prior experience mentoring engineers or moving into engineering management.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for Talent's shared services, including user management, authentication and SSO, role-based access control, and notification systems (email, in-app, and other channels).
• Design and evolve our approach to data exchange: APIs, events, webhooks, and file-based integrations with employers, schools, HRIS and other partner systems, with clear contracts, versioning, and observability.
• Build reusable services, libraries, and patterns that domain teams can adopt with minimal friction. Treat other engineering teams as your customers: write the docs, gather feedback, and measure adoption.
• Write code alongside the team across the front end and back end, and set the bar for code quality, system design, and security through hands-on contribution and code review.
• Work with Product, Security, and Compliance to define requirements for identity, access, consent, and data handling in a regulated, financial-services-adjacent environment.
• Break large initiatives into milestones, spec stories with the team and product leadership, and balance platform investment and technical debt against feature requests from domain teams.
• Mentor and coach engineers, and help the team build an engineering culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement. This role has no direct reports at the start, with a path toward managing people as the team grows.
• Apply AI-assisted development (code generation, test writing, refactoring, documentation) to raise quality and speed, and share what works with the wider engineering org.
• Build resilient, self-healing systems using infrastructure as code, monitoring, and alerting, and participate in the on-call rotation for the services Foundations owns.

Benefits

• Competitive cash and equity compensation
• Health benefits (health, dental, & vision)
• Student loan repayment benefits
• 401k + match
• Flexible PTO policy
• Opportunities to grow and perform in a fast-paced environment alongside a stellar team

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree