ParentSquare

Staff Engineer

United States full-time Senior $180,000 - $230,000
full-time Senior level Technology & IT Salary listed Curated
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About the role

ParentSquare is a rapidly growing Santa Barbara-based company that’s changing the way schools and parents communicate every day. Sound simple? We strive to keep it that way! Our mission is to give schools the power to incredibly enhance family engagement for all students. ParentSquare and RemindHub, our flagship products, serve over 22 million students and drive our mission by providing unified communications tools -forms, sign ups, payments, RSVPs, direct messaging, language translations, chat and more. Remind Chat, our free product, reaches over 80% of K-12 students, providing a safe and easy-to-use platform for direct communication between teachers and families. And our latest innovation, SmartSites, offers state-of-the-art websites for school districts, enhancing their online presence and accessibility.

We are not just creating a product; we are creating empowered educators and engaged parents to improve the lives of all students. We are passionate advocates for our customers and for our employees and we invite you to join us on this exciting journey.

Who we’re looking for:

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer who operates with a high degree of urgency and a "multiplier" mindset. While this role is one level down from our Principal position, the expectations for technical leadership and architectural influence remain high. We are specifically seeking an AI-forward engineer. To us, this means you are someone who has fundamentally evolved your workflow using LLMs and AI agents. You should be the person in the room who can demonstrate how to use AI to bypass manual boilerplate, accelerate debugging, and ship clear, simple functionality at a pace that traditional methods can't match

Most importantly, you’re someone who shares in our passion for improving the lives of students through communication.

This role will include:

Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with product owners, executive leadership, design, sales, and marketing to ensure we build the right things as simply as possible

AI Evangelism: Act as the internal champion for AI development practices, mentoring the engineering org on using AI to increase sprint velocity and code quality

Scalable Engineering: Build and run systems that operate robustly at scale while ensuring the highest level of security for the schools that rely on us

Technical Culture: Work with leadership to build a unified technical direction and a culture of excellence and speed.

Architectural Evolution: Review PRs and design the future architecture of our systems, including the evolution of our monolithic architectures

Our ideal candidate will have the following:

Deep Technical Expertise: Mastery of large-scale services using Ruby, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and PHP.

Systems Mastery: Deep knowledge of distributed systems, relational databases (MySQL/Postgres), and AWS infrastructure (Aurora, RDS, SQS)

AI-Native Workflow: You treat AI as your primary partner in the development lifecycle, using it to bypass boilerplate and focus on deep architectural work

Collaborative Communicator: You can represent the engineering team in high-stakes discussions with non-technical stakeholders to drive business value

Education: Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science or a related field

The perks of working for us are great!

You’ll get your foot in the door as our company continues to grow. We’re big believers in work-life balance and provide:

Employer-paid health insurance (including dependent coverage)

An employer-matched 401K retirement savings program from day 1

Paid Parental Leave

Stock options

Health + wellness reimbursements

PTO that increases each year

15 paid holidays, including your birthday!

As a fully remote team, we’ll make sure you have all the tools and equipment you need to make your home office a place where you can thrive.

We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. We are committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace in compliance with applicable state laws.

The salary range for this role will be $180,000-$230,000, DOE.

Originally posted on Himalayas

Interview prep

Walk in with sharper answers.

Use this as a quick practice sheet before you speak with the employer.

Senior
Technology & IT Javascript MySQL Python Remote Collaboration Sales Senior level

Likely questions

  1. Tell us about work you have done that is close to the Staff Engineer role.
  2. How would you approach your first 30 days at ParentSquare?
  3. Which of Javascript, MySQL and Python have you used recently, and what did it help you achieve?
  4. How have you led people, improved a process, or made a hard decision in a previous role?
  5. How do you handle busy days, changing priorities, or pressure at work?

Prepare before the call

  • A recent example that proves your experience with Javascript, MySQL and Python.
  • One short story with a problem, your action, and the result.
  • Two examples that show the strengths listed on your CV.
  • A clear reason why this role and company interest you.
  • Your availability, preferred work style, and salary expectations.

Ask them

  • What would success look like in the first 90 days?
  • What are the main problems this hire should help solve?
  • How does the team give feedback and measure good work?
  • What does a normal working week look like for this role?
Practice line

I am interested in the Staff Engineer role because I can bring practical experience in Javascript, MySQL and Python, learn the team quickly, and contribute to the outcomes ParentSquare needs from this hire.

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