Senior Software Engineer, Optimizer

Who we are

School scheduling is a hard problem, one that technology was meant to solve. Yet for decades, the master schedule has been built by hand, consuming educators’ valuable time while delivering a sub-optimal result for students. We started Timely to build the tool we wish we had when we were in schools. And today, we are changing how schools create high quality schedules for teachers and students. Timely combines groundbreaking AI technology with support from a team of expert school schedulers: saving schedulers’ time, and surfacing opportunities for leaders to unlock staff potential. Timely delivers optimized master schedules that are more efficient, accommodate diverse educator needs, and enable student access to courses and pathways that impact their lives.

Our district and school partners agree: scheduling is a key opportunity for educational innovation, and that Timely is the indispensable partner in addressing the challenge. We’re experiencing exciting growth as a company, while doubling down on our mission and people-centered approach to leveraging powerful technology. We serve districts and charter school organizations across 20+ states, growing (and renewing) at rates that lead the education technology industry. This growth has been driven by our strong product-market fit, deep understanding of education, and commitment to customer success.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer who will design, build, and maintain our core optimization technology along with the full-stack and data-intensive systems surrounding it, powering scheduling for our users. You will be expected to lead challenging technical projects encompassing these technical domains. You will also be responsible for operationalizing the optimizer product for scale and usage: being on-call as needed, establishing tests and observability, and running data-driven experiments to inform decisions about the core technology. Finally, you’ll provide leadership within your squad and with the overall engineering team on critical engineering concerns that accelerate our ability to deliver value to customers at high quality and high scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with product to surface and refine improvements in the optimizer’s core algorithm, model-builders, and the full-stack job orchestration framework built around it.

• Research, recommend, and implement extensions to the core optimization technology: leveraging new technologies (including generative AI and machine learning) to improve accuracy, speed, and accessibility for users.

• Lead major projects or initiatives as necessary while also supporting the product squad as a whole in meeting their goals. Drive the process of defining and disambiguating new opportunities when necessary.

• Provide technical leadership over at least some key areas of the stack for the optimizer squad, along with the wider engineering team.

• Exhibit and apply best practices around communication, collaboration, and project management to facilitate effective, timely, and high quality delivery of work.

• Troubleshoot customer issues and provide timely resolutions to ensure a seamless scheduling experience. Some limited on-call responsibilities may apply.

• Mentor and support junior engineers, promoting a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of development experience, with a demonstrated track record of shipping value to customers while contributing across the stack as necessary.

• Prior success in driving software delivery on complex and challenging technology projects (partnering with product stakeholders, driving critical decisions, establishing project roadmaps and work tasks, presenting outcomes to external stakeholders, etc.).

• Depth of knowledge in at least some of the following areas, with a strong interest and capacity to learn in the others:

  • Linear optimization modeling and solvers

  • Application stacks built heavily on machine learning

  • Product and infrastructure stacks leveraging generative AI

  • Backend API and asynchronous task development

• An ability to dive into other critical parts of the stack when the product and team needs demand it, including: frontend engineering, cloud infrastructure, and data engineering.

• Demonstrated record of diving deep into complex product requirements and challenging technical domains and learning and contributing to them quickly.

• Proficiency in developing and maintaining scalable web applications, implementing unit and integration tests, and working with CI/CD pipelines.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, especially in cross-functional environments.

• Commitment to continuous improvement: seeking out and welcoming code reviews, pairing, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Experience and comfort operating in a fast startup environment and all that entails: strong sense of ownership, self-direction, bias towards action, and optimizing for quick delivery of value and learnings for the business.

• Prior experience in EdTech is a plus but not required.

• Fully remote role with a preference for candidates based in NY or Boston.

Why Join Us

• Work with an exceptional team tackling meaningful challenges in education.

• Be part of a growing, financially healthy company with a proven product.

• Enjoy comprehensive benefits, including health, dental, vision, and life insurance, unlimited PTO, and professional development opportunities including free access to online learning programs.