Lead Software Engineer - Newsela Writing Team

About This Role:

We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer for the Newsela Writing product engineering team. This is an IC-heavy technical leadership role (~50-70% coding) with no direct reports. The Lead Software Engineer owns technical direction, code quality standards, and day-to-day engineering coordination for the writing-app (Next.js, node.js, and Python backends). 

Why You'll Love This Role: 

• Own architecture decisions for the writing-app and evaluate technical trade-offs that balance speed, quality, and maintainability.
• Define and evolve the team's technical standards (coding patterns, testing expectations, dependency management) and drive technical debt reduction alongside feature work.
• Lead triage and technical coordination during incidents. Drive root cause analysis and propose preventive measures. Be the first responder when production issues arise for the writing product.
• Actively drive technical discussions in grooming, planning, standups, and retros. Ensure technical decisions are documented where appropriate.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Review significant PRs and provide substantive feedback, catch architectural issues before they merge, and ensure PRs are appropriately sized and scoped.
• Drive obstacle resolution during sprints - unblock engineers, make technical calls, escalate when needed. Identify and flag risks early.
• Translate between product requirements and technical implementation for the team. Communicate technical status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to the Engineering Manager and stakeholders.
• Leverage AI/LLM-powered workflows and code-generation tools (e.g., Claude Code, Copilot) to stay efficient and productive, with code reviews to ensure quality and security.

About You:

• 5+ years building modern web applications in a SaaS environment, with significant full-stack experience.
• Strong proficiency in React/Next.js (frontend) and Python (backend). Comfortable with database design, API architecture, and frontend state management.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, deployment processes, and monitoring (Datadog or similar).
• Experience with rich text editors, document collaboration, or ProseMirror/similar frameworks is a strong plus.
• Comfort using AI-assisted coding tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor) responsibly with security and license awareness.
• Demonstrated ability to self-direct - picks up work, drives it to completion, and identifies what needs to be done without being told.
• Code review discipline - history of providing substantive, constructive feedback (not just approvals).
• Experience in making technical decisions under ambiguity and communicating the reasoning.
• Strong communication & collaboration skills: active in meetings, clear async writing in Slack/Jira/documentation, comfortable giving and receiving direct technical feedback.

About Newsela:

Newsela takes authentic, real world content from trusted sources and makes it instruction ready for K-12 classrooms. Each text is published at five reading levels, so content is accessible to every learner. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for content that's personalized to student interests, accessible to everyone, aligned to instructional standards, and attached to activities and reporting that hold teachers accountable for instruction and students accountable for their work. With over 15,000 texts on our platform and multiple new texts published every day across 20+ genres, Newsela enables educators to go deep on any subject they choose.

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