[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Code for America

Role Description

Code for America is looking for a talented Staff Software Engineer who will help shape the technical direction of an engineering team that is contributing to high-impact government services. In this role you will drive reliable, high-quality software delivery — improving how the team builds, tests, and ships the systems that make public services more accessible and effective for the people who need them most.

All Code for America software engineers are involved in every stage of our products' lifecycle, from prototyping and design to developing features in response to user feedback, to operating technical systems at scale.

Staff Software Engineers pair hands-on engineering with leadership — guiding their team’s technical direction, demonstrating sound judgment, and enabling their fellow engineers through collaboration and mentorship. This role will report to the Engineering Manager and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time.

In this position you will:

• Technical Delivery
  • Craft new features that help users more easily navigate government services and receive a dignified experience.
  • Write automated tests and develop monitoring strategies to ensure a high level of service quality.
  • Work iteratively to ship minimal features, learn, and harden them to scale once proven.
  • Contribute to design, implementation, and code review, and make technical trade-offs alongside your team, responsibly using AI-assisted development.
  • Own architecture and data-modeling decisions for significant parts of a production system, weighing tradeoffs across competing priorities — speed vs. maintainability, the familiar tool vs. the right one, ideal vs. feasible.
  • Support Engineering's culture of writing by producing quality documentation and learning materials for internal and external audiences.
• Technical Leadership & Enablement
  • Establish direction for technical work within your team or project, anticipating challenges, documenting decisions, and helping the team understand the why behind approaches, not just the what.
  • Collaborate with Product Managers and other cross-functional peers and adapt your approach as priorities, technology, and team needs shift.
  • Biasing to action when the team is stuck, committing to a path forward and revising as new information emerges.
  • Mentor engineers on sound technical judgment and engineering practice, and create conditions for them to grow into unfamiliar problem spaces through pairing, documentation, structured learning, or direct coaching.
  • Act as connective tissue within your team—guide team norms, surface dependencies early, align on shared patterns, and bring in practices that have worked well elsewhere to strengthen how your team delivers.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with strong expertise in system architecture, data modeling, web technologies, and API design.
• Experience working across multiple languages, frameworks, and tech stacks — or a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into unfamiliar ones.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools judiciously, validating and refining generated code for quality, and modeling that discipline for teammates.
• Experience with Agile Software Development models like Scrum, XP, TDD, or BDD.
• Demonstrated technical leadership in a team environment: setting direction and guiding sound decision-making in constrained or ambiguous contexts.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and IaC tooling.
• Eager collaboration with peers, and in providing technical and professional mentorship.
• Truly excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Expert understanding and experience communicating with cross-functional peers, and in translating those conversations into actionable tasks.
• A deep commitment to Code for America's mission of making government services work well for the people who need them most.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in one or more specific technology or domain areas relevant to Code for America's product portfolio.
• Experience with making government services better for people who need them most.
• Personal or professional experience with the justice system, social safety net, or other mission relevant experience.
• Experience building and integrating AI-powered features in production systems, with evaluation and monitoring.

Benefits

• Salary: Code for America’s salary bands are transparent. The offer targets for this role range from $128,945 to $157,850 annually.
• Comprehensive benefits package including:
  • Leadership and teammates who share a strong work ethic and values.
  • A collaborative, cross-functional, hardworking, and joyful environment.
  • Laptop provided.
  • A one-time $700 payment for remote environment setup; $200 stipend (in first paycheck) and up to $500 reimbursement.
  • Cell phone and/or internet reimbursement of $50 per month.
  • $500 annual stipend towards professional development; prorated at time of hire.
  • Training/guidance for staff required to utilize AI as part of their role.
  • Employees receive a 100% employer match on the first 3% of contributions to retirement plans.
  • At least one no-cost health insurance option for full-time employees.
  • Open personal time off (subject to manager approval), a minimum of 14 paid holidays, and an org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day.
  • Paid sick time; up to 96 hours annually.
  • 17 weeks of paid parental and family leave.
  • 3 weeks of paid sabbatical after 5 years of service.