Senior Software Engineer

ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — Artstor, JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome historical barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to each other and our well-being, and are committed to building and sustaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.

The Role

We are welcoming a Senior Software Engineer (Full-Stack) to be part of our dedicated Search team. As a full-stack software engineer at ITHAKA, you’ll have an opportunity to contribute to high-impact products that help make education accessible for everyone. As a valued member of the Search team, your primary focus will be refining the search and discovery experience for all JSTOR users. 

Why Join Us?

• Autonomy: Empowerment to choose the best tools and languages to solve problems.  
• Continuous deployment: Contribute to a streamlined development process through automated continuous delivery pipeline.
• Impact: Directly contribute to products reaching millions of users.
• Open source contribution: Opportunities to give back to the community.

Explore more about what we do and how we do it through our Tech blog.

Responsibilities

As a Senior Software Engineer (Full-Stack) on our Search team, you will:

• Collaborate with team members in product management, design, user research, data science, and engineering to explore, shape, and develop new Search & Discovery product experiences, from ideation to implementation, at scale. 
• Design, develop, and maintain large-scale distributed software services and solutions that are secure, reliable, scalable, and maintainable in a CI/CD environment.
• Engage with stakeholders to understand their needs and deliver sustainable solutions.
• Use web analytics to inform product discovery and measure key performance indicators.
• Optimize application performance using APM tools.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to team members.
• Advocate for the adoption of innovative technologies and methodologies.
• Contribute to assessment of risk factors, cost-effectiveness, resource allocation, and other considerations essential for supporting technology enhancements.
• Provide reliable, responsive support and incident resolutions during on-call shifts (PagerDuty). 

Experience and Skills

• 5+ years of recent, hands-on professional experience as a full-stack software engineer building large-scale, distributed web applications using AWS cloud infrastructure services.
• Demonstrated proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript (React, Vue, Angular, Node.js) and  Python (Django, FastAPI). 
• Hands-on experience with REST or GraphQL APIs, version control systems (GitHub/GitLab), and testing frameworks (JUnit, Jest, pytest, Playwright), along with a commitment to test-driven development (TDD) practices.
• Proficiency in using dependency management and project build tools like Maven, NPM/Yarn, Webpack, or bundler.
• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP).
• Exceptional communication skills and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Preferred Experience and Skills

• Proficiency in using profiling tools (Grafana, Prometheus, AppDynamics) for performance optimization.
• Experience with cache management, content delivery, and edge application security using CDNs (Fastly, CloudFront).
• Experience with data modeling in relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB).
• Experience in securing large-scale applications against vulnerability exploits.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach engineers, fostering both technical and interpersonal development.
• Interest or experience in generative AI, search/information retrieval systems, and machine learning (LangChain, OpenAI).

You’re not expected to be an expert in every technology listed below. Accomplished tech professionals have diverse experiences and can acquire new skills. We value your passion for continuous improvement and your ability to optimize for clarity, reliability, and performance. You will explore new technologies with our support through onboarding, mentorship, and continuous learning.

Work Authorization and Sponsorship 

ITHAKA is not currently considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authori