Senior Software Engineer, Data

Learning Commons aims to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner by building AI infrastructure that better connects the way students learn to the tools they learn with.

The Team

At Learning Commons, we operate at the intersection of technology, research, and philanthropy. We pair product development with grantmaking to scale proven teaching and learning practices for the benefit of every learner. We aim to bring learning science into the tools educators and students use every day.

Our work is grounded in a deep belief: when technology reflects the realities of classrooms and the science of how students learn, it can meaningfully strengthen teaching and unlock new possibilities for students. The rise of generative AI offers us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically accelerate the translation of research insights into practical, classroom-ready tools; tools that honor teachers’ expertise, adapt to students’ needs, and make effective learning practices easier to access, implement, and sustain.

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 teachers and students, 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.

The Opportunity

As a Senior Software Engineer, Data on the team, you will design, build, and scale software systems to help educators better address the myriad challenges they face. You will use research on the science of student learning and human development to design tools that help teachers connect with students and tailor learning experiences to individual student needs.

What You'll Do

• Change Data Capture (CDC):
• Create new CDC pipelines to support the launch of new products.
• Collaborate with the infra team on improving the monitoring and scalability of the CDC pipelines.
• Triage and investigate Debezium or Kafka issues in collaboration with the infra team.
• Maintain key data pipelines
• Ingest external data sets for use by the team
• Improve data usability and data quality in our data warehouse
• Launch new ETL (extract, transform, load) processes in production
• Databricks & AWS:
• Set up roles & access permissions for Databricks, following best practices.
• Set up ETL pipelines or orchestration workflows within AWS & Databricks ecosystems.
• Data Curation:
• Collect and organize knowledge through various sources, maintaining and updating data to ensure accuracy.
• Transform, integrate, aggregate, annotate, and enrich data to enhance its value.
• Derive and continuously update student attributes for personalization use cases.

What You'll Bring

• Hands-on experience with AWS services and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Databricks / Spark ecosystem.
• Knowledge of CDC, Debezium, and Kafka.
• Experience in Software Engineering or Data Engineering
• Expertise in writing efficient and optimized SQL
• Experience with dimensional data modeling and schema design in a database or data warehouse
• Expertise with scripting languages such as Python 
• Experience with ETL tooling such as Airflow
• Experience with large-scale cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake
• Passion for education and bringing technology to improve education
• Experience working with large data sets
• Love for collaborating and working with people in understanding data needs, as well as scoping and executing on projects.

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