Senior Staff Software Engineer - Learning Content Experience

United States

About Coursera

Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller to make world-class learning accessible to everyone, everywhere. Today, over 190 million learners and 375+ university and industry partners use our platform to gain skills in fields like AI, data science, technology, and business. As a Delaware public benefit corporation and Certified B Corp, we’re driven by the belief that learning can transform lives through learning.

Why Join Us

At Coursera, we’re looking for inventors, innovators, and lifelong learners ready to shape the future of education. You’ll help build global programs and tools that power online learning for millions turning bold ideas into real impact. People who thrive here are customer-first builders who move fast, simplify ruthlessly, and iterate relentlessly on the metrics that matter. 

We’re a globally distributed team and let you choose the best way you work, whether it's from home, a Coursera hub, or a co-working space near you. Our virtual hiring and onboarding make it easy to join us and start making an impact from anywhere. If you’re ready to make a global impact, scale unique products exclusive to Coursera, and expand your career horizons, apply below.

Job Overview: 

The Learning Content Experience (LCE) team delivers all aspects of our content experience, including how content is ingested, generated, or authored, and how learners engage with instruction, practice their skills, and undergo evaluation. This area also includes the supporting building blocks for this experience, such as how learners receive guidance throughout the process, how an engaging, hands-on experience can be delivered in a specialized domain, and even how we assess learners' skills and tie them to outcomes.

As a senior staff engineer, you will collaborate with both technical and cross-functional leaders to help set direction for an organization of 70+ engineers. Through this collaboration, you will build a deep understanding of Product and business needs and identify opportunities for technology to further our mission. In addition, you'll also work closely with individual teams to dive into particularly hairy explorations and deliverables across this broad roadmap; you will influence technical decisions and design trade-offs to ensure we can speedily deliver on ambitious, innovative goals while building the foundations for extension and scale in years to come. Last but not least, you'll partner with Tech Leads from each team to create a forum where there is open discussion of technical challenges and opportunities to learn and grow together.

Responsibilities:

  • Work cross-functionally with engineering, product, design, and data teams to inform a roadmap that balances long-term and short-term priorities, based on both big-picture perspective as well as data-informed learnings
  • Collaborate with tech leads to identify and understand key architectural problems in the Learning Content Experience (LCE) domain
  • Develop an architecture that efficiently addresses business challenges such as emergent complexity, leveraging foundational knowledge of design patterns and practical experience
  • Promote sustainable architectural solutions by establishing and advocating for core principles, documented through decision records on API design, data storage strategies, and other key choices
  • Apply industry best practices and system design expertise to guide local design decisions through collaboration and reviews with engineers
  • Mentor and guide fellow engineers to help them improve their technical ability and become more effective product software engineers
  • Initiate and lead high-leverage projects to raise the quality bar for how we work and what we deliver (e.g. by improving developer productivity, and/or the quality, performance, availability, and resiliency of our systems and teams)

Qualifications:

  • 8+ years of experience working in a relevant product software engineering role
  • 3+ years of experience iteratively driving architecture decisions in a single domain, evaluating success, and adapting these choices to changing product and business needs
  • Expertise in designing highly-scalable and performant full-stack applications, microservices, and storage layers using common frameworks, languages, and infrastructure (e.g. Java, MySQL, NoSQL, Kafka or equivalent)
  • Knowledge of professional software engineering and best practices for the full SDLC, including technical design, coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, documentation, and operations
  • Able to communicate effectively at multiple levels of abstraction to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, both verbally and in writing
  • A strong sense of ownership and conscientiousness, with a strong desire to learn about products, people, and technology; proactive and action-oriented
  • Strong empathy for both engineers and cross-functional partners, to enable the right balance of inquisitive information-gathering and timely decision-making in order to identity problems, overcome ambiguity, and align others on a solution

Nice to haves:

  • Experience in hybrid teams supporting both external user-facing web products and internal platforms to enable other teams
  • Expertise in technologies like ReactJS, GraphQL/DGS, DynamoDB, and Redis for designing scalable and high-performance applications end-to-end
  • Experience with generative AI tools and supporting processes and systems; proficient in identifying opportunities enabled by emerging technologies while managing production needs for quality and scalability
  • Strong track record of leadership and mentorship, preferably in a remote environment
  • Experience with teams with diverse identities and working styles, tailoring approaches to bring out the best contributions from each individual teammate

We recognize that qualified candidates may not meet 100% of the qualifications listed above. If you’re passionate about this role and believe your skills and experiences align with what we’re looking for, we encourage you to apply.

Compensation:

This role is available in the following US Pay Zones:

Zone 1: $259,825 - $220,850

Zone 2: $248,900 - $211,565

Zone 3: $230,850 - $196,220

Zone 4: $214,700 - $182,490

At Coursera, we offer competitive, zone-based pay aligned to your location, experience, and role level across four U.S. pay zones. Our total rewards package goes beyond salary, with comprehensive health and wellness benefits, bonus and RSU equity programs, and global perks designed to help you grow and thrive wherever you are.

US Pay Zones:

  • US-Z1: Bay Area
  • US-Z2: NYC and Seattle Metro
  • US-Z3: CA, WA, NY, NJ, CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, MD, OR, RI, TX, VA
  • US-Z4: AK, AZ, DE, FL, HI, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, NV, NH, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, UT, VT, WI

If this opportunity interests you, you might like this course on Coursera:

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