[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer, Fullstack @Skylight

Role Description

At Skylight, software engineers design, implement, and maintain software systems to improve government services for users. This software is built to meet the needs of regular users of government services as well as Skylight’s partners in government.

Skylight is partnering with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to build Fostering the Future , a platform that helps young adults aging out of foster care find the resources they need, when they need them. Co-designed with former foster youth and launching in fall 2026, the platform turns what someone shares in their own words into a personalized, AI-enabled action plan.

You’ll work on both the user experience and the resource set that makes it valuable. You’ll engineer the platform end-to-end: a chat-like experience that pairs LLM features with a curated knowledge base of resources for foster youth. Day to day, that means:

• Building the Next.js interface young people will use.
• Developing the backend APIs behind it.
• Tuning prompts, embeddings, and semantic search for accurate, safe, and genuinely useful answers.

Our stack includes Python (LangChain and FastAPI), Postgres with pgvector, Next.js, and embedding and chat models including Amazon Titan and Claude — but we care more about your experience optimizing LLM interactions with knowledge bases than about any specific tool.

You’ll join a small cross-functional team of researchers, designers, product managers, and engineers helping the roughly 20,000 young people who age out of foster care each year get the support they’re entitled to. This is a fast-moving, zero-to-one effort — greenfield development on a new public-facing federal platform, at national scale.

Qualifications

• Experience optimizing LLM interactions with knowledge bases — such as semantic search, embedding models and vector search, prompt engineering or tuning, or natural language query optimization.
• Ability to write clean, working, and reusable code.
• Can produce high-quality code by adhering to good practices such as automated testing.
• Familiar with how to build secure, compliant software and defend against common vulnerabilities.
• Possess a foundational understanding of data engineering, including how to use various datastores to handle persistent data in software systems.
• Understand the different pieces of software systems and how to fit them together, while keeping performance, reliability, and availability in mind.
• Understand the importance of always putting users at the center of your work.
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery.
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values.

Requirements

• Familiarity with our specific stack: Python (LangChain and FastAPI), Postgres with pgvector, Next.js, and embedding and chat models such as Amazon Titan and Claude.
• Experience working with databases and/or cloud infrastructure.
• Familiarity with CI/CD best practices.
• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g., Docker, Terraform).
• Experience delivering technology in government, regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings.
• A track record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams.

Benefits

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance.
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Life and AD&D insurance.
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account.
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period.
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays.
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents.
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options.
• Business development / sales bonuses.
• Referral bonuses.
• Annual $2000 allowance for professional development.
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases.
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more).
• Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year.
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment.
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good.