Staff Software Engineer - Code for America

Code for America believes government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age, and that government at all levels can and should work well for all people. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to show that with the mindful use of technology, we can break down barriers, meet community needs, and find real solutions.

Our employees build and transform government and community tools and services, making them so good they inspire change. We merge the best parts of technology, nonprofit, and government to help support the people who need it most.

About the Role

Code for America is looking for a talented Staff Software Engineer who will help shape the technical direction of an engineering team that is contributing to high-impact government services. In this role, you will drive reliable, high-quality software delivery — improving how the team builds, tests, and ships the systems that make public services more accessible and effective for the people who need them most.

All Code for America software engineers are involved in every stage of our products' lifecycle, from prototyping and design to developing features in response to user feedback, to operating technical systems at scale. Staff Software Engineers pair hands-on engineering with leadership — guiding their team’s technical direction, demonstrating sound judgment, and enabling their fellow engineers through collaboration and mentorship.

This role reports to the Engineering Manager and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time. This is a remote position open to those who reside full-time within the United States.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Delivery

• Craft new features that help users more easily navigate government services and receive a dignified experience.
• Write automated tests and develop monitoring strategies to ensure a high level of service quality.
• Work iteratively to ship minimal features, learn, and harden them to scale once proven.
• Contribute to design, implementation, and code review, and make technical trade-offs alongside your team, responsibly using AI-assisted development.
• Own architecture and data-modeling decisions for significant parts of a production system, weighing tradeoffs across competing priorities.
• Support Engineering's culture of writing by producing quality documentation and learning materials.

Technical Leadership & Enablement

• Establish direction for technical work within your team or project, anticipating challenges, documenting decisions, and helping the team understand the why behind approaches.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and other cross-functional peers and adapt your approach as priorities, technology, and team needs shift.
• Bias to action when the team is stuck, committing to a path forward and revising as new information emerges.
• Mentor engineers on sound technical judgment and engineering practice, and create conditions for them to grow into unfamiliar problem spaces.
• Act as connective tissue within your team—guide team norms, surface dependencies early, align on shared patterns, and bring in practices that have worked well elsewhere.

About You

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with strong expertise in system architecture, data modeling, web technologies, and API design.
• Experience working across multiple languages, frameworks, and tech stacks — or a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into unfamiliar ones.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI coding tools judiciously, validating and refining generated code for quality, and modeling that discipline for teammates.
• Experience with Agile Software Development models like Scrum, XP, TDD, or BDD.
• Demonstrated technical leadership in a team environment: setting direction and guiding sound decision-making in constrained or ambiguous contexts.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and IaC tooling.
• Eager collaboration with peers, and in providing technical and professional mentorship.
• Truly excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Expert understanding and experience communicating with cross-functional peers, and in translating those conversations into actionable tasks.
• A deep commitment to Code for America's mission of making government services work well for the people who need them most.

Bonus Points

• Deep expertise in one or more specific technology or domain areas relevant to Code for America's product portfolio.
• Experience with making government services better for people who need them most.
• Personal or professional experience with the justice system, social safety net, or other mission-relevant experience.
• Experience building and integrating AI-powered features in production systems, with evaluation and monitoring.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary

The offer targets for this role range from $128,945 to $157,850 annually, varying based on market and geographic location.

Benefits and Perks

• Health Care: At least one no-cost health insurance option for full-time employees (employee-only coverage) and a minimum of 80% of the cost of dependent coverage.
• Retirement: 401(k) plan with a 100% employer match on the first 3% of contributions. Employees with 3+ years of service receive an additional 50% match on contributions between 3% and 5% (up to a 5% maximum employer contribution).
• Time Off: Open personal time off (subject to manager approval), a minimum of 14 paid holidays, an org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day, up to 96 hours of paid sick time annually, 17 weeks of paid parental and family leave, and 3 weeks of paid sabbatical after 5 years of service.
• Remote Work Support: Laptop provided, a one-time $700 payment for remote environment setup ($200 stipend + up to $500 reimbursement), and cell phone/internet reimbursement of $50 per month.
• Professional Development: $500 annual stipend towards professional development (with up to $500 rollover, max $1,000), plus AI-related skills training.
• Working Hours: Full-time (40 hours/week), Monday - Friday. Collaborative working hours are 10 AM - 3 PM PT, during which all staff are expected to be available.