Staff Software Engineer - School Safety Platform

At GoGuardian, we're expanding our mission of helping every student learn, thrive, and feel safe. We're building a new generation of school safety products that help schools respond faster, operate more effectively, and create safer learning environments for millions of students and educators. As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be an early technical leader helping define and build category-defining products where software, hardware, and real-world operational reliability intersect.

Responsibilities

Lead architecture, technical design, and implementation of new school safety products from concept through production; Drive technical strategy and engineering excellence across multiple teams and systems; Design scalable, secure, and resilient distributed systems that operate reliably in real-world environments; Build and maintain integrations with third-party platforms, identity providers, communication systems, hardware devices, and external data sources; Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Engineering leaders to translate customer needs into practical technical solutions; Mentor engineers, raise engineering standards, and help shape the technical culture of a growing organization; Make thoughtful technology decisions that balance customer impact, operational complexity, speed of execution, and long-term maintainability

Requirements

8+ years of experience building and operating production software systems; Proven track record of owning and delivering complex backend or full-stack systems end-to-end; Strong experience designing distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native applications; Experience building integration-heavy platforms involving third-party APIs, webhooks, data synchronization, and identity systems (OAuth, SAML, SSO); Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, data modeling, observability, reliability, performance, and security; Experience handling sensitive data and building systems where privacy, security, and compliance are architectural requirements; Demonstrated success delivering 0-to-1 products or major platform initiatives in environments with significant ambiguity; Proven ability to influence technical direction, mentor engineers, and lead through collaboration rather than authority

Nice to have

Real-time, high-reliability, or operationally critical systems; Distributed, event-driven, or edge-to-cloud architectures; IoT platforms, connected devices, device fleet management, or hardware integrations; Software platforms that interact with physical devices, kiosks, peripherals, sensors, or other endpoint technologies; Physical security, operational technology, critical infrastructure, or other environments where reliability and resilience are essential; Large-scale distributed systems that integrate with numerous third-party platforms and external systems

Benefits

Competitive pay; Complete health insurance; 401(k) matching; Employee equity plan; Flexible time off; Paid holidays; Paid parental leave; Paid year-end holiday break; Work from home funds; Fertility & adoption reimbursement; Varied and challenging role in an innovative, global company; Supportive, driven colleagues