Senior Software Engineer, Developer Experience

Learning Commons is Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s education initiative, which aims to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner. Learning Commons became the name of our education efforts in 2025 to build on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s work over the past decade to advance learning science and help translate that research into classroom practice.

The Team

At Learning Commons, we pair technology with grantmaking to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner. We aim to translate what learning science tells us about how students learn best into classroom practice. With the advent of generative AI, that translation work can be accelerated and scaled to have a greater impact. 

Our mission is to bring learning science into the tools used every day by teachers and students, ensuring that technology reflects the realities of classrooms and strengthens teaching and learning.

In today’s fragmented edtech landscape, school districts are often left piecing together products that don’t always align with curricula or instructional needs. While AI holds enormous potential to support educators, it can only deliver on that promise when grounded in research, high-quality educational data, and expert evaluation. That’s why we’re building open, public-purpose infrastructure — datasets, rubrics, and resources — that help raise the standard for educational tools and create more consistent, impactful learning experiences for all students and teachers.

At our core, we are builders, and our unique builder philanthropy approach is what sets us apart from other education funders. Take a closer look at the highlights and significant milestones of CZI’s first eight years of education work.

The Opportunity

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Developer Experience team within Learning Commons, you’ll build the AI infrastructure and software systems that enable EdTech developers to better connect how students learn with the tools they learn from. You’ll be a key contributor to the engineering work that powers our open-source GitHub repositories, developer documentation platform, and Developer Portal — the primary interface between our AI tools and the developer community that builds on top of them. This means working across APIs, SDKs, data standards, and developer-facing services to craft experiences that feel intuitive, reliable, and fast.

You’ll lead through technical excellence: driving architectural decisions, setting quality standards, designing extensible systems, and partnering closely with product, design, and research. You’ll help define how developers discover, learn, and build with Learning Commons APIs, data, and open infrastructure — shaping the foundation that enables meaningful innovation in education technology.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain high-quality developer-facing tools — including SDKs, APIs, documentation frameworks, UI components, and core elements of our Developer Portal.
• Lead frontend feature development using React, TypeScript, and modern tooling, ensuring fast, accessible, and intuitive developer interfaces.
• Own full-stack feature delivery from initial problem framing through architecture, implementation, testing, and production rollout.
• Contribute to and extend UI tooling, including Storybook components, documentation patterns, and shared design system improvements.
• Strengthen product quality through clear, scalable code; thoughtful code reviews; and robust testing practices using tools like Playwright.
• Improve development workflows by contributing to GitHub Actions pipelines, internal tooling, and engineering best practices.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, research, and infrastructure teams to scope, plan, and deliver impactful DevEx features.

What You'll Bring

• Senior full-stack engineer with strong modern frontend expertise (React, TypeScript, Vite, React Router) and 5+ years of experience building high-quality software in modern web ecosystems
• Solid Node.js skills for full-stack feature work
• Experience shipping developer-facing products (SDKs, APIs, dev tools, or portals)
• Strong architectural instincts (modular, scalable, maintainable systems), and a strong understanding of the value of clean architecture, code quality, maintainability, and predictable delivery
• Hands-on experience with open-source workflows
• Experience building or contributing to developer portals, documentation systems, or learning-oriented tooling
• Familiarity with AI developer tools, embeddings, or LLM-powered workflows
• Experience designing or contributing to design systems or shared component libraries
• Familiarity with analytics tooling to instrument and measure developer workflows
• Experience with API schema standards (OpenAPI, JSON Schema) and documentation tooling

Compensation

The Redwood City, CA base pay range for a new hire in this role is $190,000 - $261,800. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. 

Better Together

As we grow, we’re excited to strengthen in-person connections and cultivate a collaborative, team-oriented environment. This role is a hybrid position requiring you to be onsite for at least 60% of the working month, approximately 3 days a week, with specific in-office days determined by the team’s manager. The exact schedule will be at the hiring manager's discretion and communicated during the interview process.

Benefits for the Whole You 

We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible. 

• Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. 
• Funding for select family-forming benefits. 
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving

If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

#LI-Hybrid