Contractor: Senior Software Engineer

About this role

Why You'll Love This Role:

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer for Newsela

What You'll Be Doing:

• Deliver high-quality work on time, leveraging AI tools to accelerate velocity without sacrificing craft.

• Own feature delivery end-to-end, from scoping and design input through implementation and release, with minimal oversight.

• Craft well-tested software that meets a high bar for quality, using AI-assisted development practices where they add value and exercising judgment where they don't.

• Build and validate AI-integrated features with sound engineering judgment, applying appropriate evaluation practices to LLM-powered and AI-assisted functionality.

• Partner closely with Engineering, Product Management, and Product Design to refine ambiguous work into clearly defined, valuable deliverables.

• Maintain reliable systems by applying best practices for observability, quality, and incident response, and actively use AI tooling to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues faster.

• Support production releases, ensuring your team's systems are deployment-ready and stable post-release.

About You:

• 5+ years building production web applications, with a strong full-stack range (modern React/TypeScript frontends and a typed or Pythonic backend).

• Track record of owning ambiguous problems end-to-end and shipping with measurable impact.

• Substantive code review history - examples of catching architectural issues.

• Active daily use of AI coding agents (Claude Code or similar) with a clear point of view on where they help, where they hurt, and how to keep their output reviewable.

• Comfort with production debugging across the stack: traces, logs, profiling, the unglamorous parts.

• Strong async written communication: clear PR descriptions, Slack comms, and specifications.

Why you’ll love working at Newsela:

• Make A Difference: No matter your role or department, the work you do each day helps share the future of education and improves the lives of students and teachers.

About Newsela:

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

All offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check as part of our pre-employment process.

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