Jobs and Careers
QU
Staff Software Engineer, Study Hub
QuizletSan Francisco, United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 7 Apr 2025
💰 $225,000/yr($184,000/yr – $225,000/yr)
About the role
About Quizlet:
Inspired by our belief that anyone can learn anything and powered by our own curiosity, we build the smartest tools we can imagine to help students learn.
Quizlet is the popular, global learning platform and app that millions of students, teachers and everyday people use to study any subject imaginable for school, work or as part of their personal interests -- including two-thirds of high school students and half of all college students in the US. Combining cognitive science and machine learning, Quizlet guides students through adaptive study activities to confidently reach their learning goals.
Valued at $1 billion, Quizlet has raised over $60 million in venture capital from investors including Icon Ventures, Union Square Ventures, General Atlantic, Costanoa Ventures, Owl Ventures, and Altos Ventures.
To serve our global community of learners, our teams tackle lofty technical challenges and design for use cases across cultures and languages. We work hard, act like owners, and collaborate every chance we get. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
About the Team:
You will be joining a fast-moving and rapidly growing team dedicated to reimagining how students interact with Quizlet and its products. Our primary goal is to encourage users to return more frequently for longer study sessions, ultimately helping them achieve academic success. To meet these objectives, you'll collaborate closely with a cutting-edge engineering team that leverages the latest AI methodologies for Quizlet’s search and recommendations system. Our team is dynamic and agile, designed to quickly adapt to user feedback as we push forward with major product innovations. Together, we are committed to delivering a transformative learning experience for students everywhere.
About the Role:
We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who brings expertise in reliability, performance, scalability, and software engineering best practices. You will leverage your experience to help solve some of our hardest problems, model best practices, and drive learning and improvement across engineering teams while contributing to broader software development initiatives. You will collaborate with product and platform teams to build robust, scalable, and high-performing systems that support our products and services.
Our colocation work model supports employees both remotely and onsite each week. Employees are required to be in the office on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by their manager or the company. This hybrid working environment facilitates collaboration, increases work efficiency, and enhances employee growth.
Inspired by our belief that anyone can learn anything and powered by our own curiosity, we build the smartest tools we can imagine to help students learn.
Quizlet is the popular, global learning platform and app that millions of students, teachers and everyday people use to study any subject imaginable for school, work or as part of their personal interests -- including two-thirds of high school students and half of all college students in the US. Combining cognitive science and machine learning, Quizlet guides students through adaptive study activities to confidently reach their learning goals.
Valued at $1 billion, Quizlet has raised over $60 million in venture capital from investors including Icon Ventures, Union Square Ventures, General Atlantic, Costanoa Ventures, Owl Ventures, and Altos Ventures.
To serve our global community of learners, our teams tackle lofty technical challenges and design for use cases across cultures and languages. We work hard, act like owners, and collaborate every chance we get. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
About the Team:
You will be joining a fast-moving and rapidly growing team dedicated to reimagining how students interact with Quizlet and its products. Our primary goal is to encourage users to return more frequently for longer study sessions, ultimately helping them achieve academic success. To meet these objectives, you'll collaborate closely with a cutting-edge engineering team that leverages the latest AI methodologies for Quizlet’s search and recommendations system. Our team is dynamic and agile, designed to quickly adapt to user feedback as we push forward with major product innovations. Together, we are committed to delivering a transformative learning experience for students everywhere.
About the Role:
We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who brings expertise in reliability, performance, scalability, and software engineering best practices. You will leverage your experience to help solve some of our hardest problems, model best practices, and drive learning and improvement across engineering teams while contributing to broader software development initiatives. You will collaborate with product and platform teams to build robust, scalable, and high-performing systems that support our products and services.
Our colocation work model supports employees both remotely and onsite each week. Employees are required to be in the office on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by their manager or the company. This hybrid working environment facilitates collaboration, increases work efficiency, and enhances employee growth.
In this role, you will:
- Drive the evolution of our systems by identifying areas for improvement, setting technical direction, and leading architectural decisions to align with business objectives
- Work closely with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to build robust, scalable applications
- Act as a technical mentor by guiding engineers in system design, best practices, and career growth, while fostering a culture of collaboration and learning
- Lead by example in writing clean, efficient, and well-documented code
- Shape the strategy for our search infrastructure, driving innovations in indexing, query performance, and scalability to support business needs
- Facilitate knowledge-sharing sessions, tech talks, and code reviews to elevate engineering excellence
What you bring to the table:
- 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering reliable and scalable systems
- Experience with modern backend frameworks (e.g., Go, PHP, Python, etc.), expertise in distributed systems, and relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL)
- Experience designing and operating high-availability, high-scale systems
- Strong experience with Elasticsearch and other search technologies (e.g., Solr, OpenSearch, Vespa), with deep knowledge of indexing strategies, query optimization, sharding strategies, replication, and caching. Skilled in testing and debugging search infrastructure, including load testing, query benchmarking, and failure scenario simulations to ensure scalability, performance, and reliability
- Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to design and implement end-to-end solutions.
- Expertise in backend development using Hack, PHP, and Go (or similar modern backend frameworks) to build and optimize scalable server-side logic and APIs
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to diverse audiences
Bonus points if you have:
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, or similar tooling
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructu
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