Staff Software Engineer

Company details

Description of the offer

Change.org is searching for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Elections Team and help build and scale innovative local election experiences and tools that empower voters throughout the 2025/2026 election cycle.

We’re a social impact business (a public benefit company), and the world’s largest social change platform with 100 million users, 40,000+ campaigns launched on the site every month, and a 100% user-generated revenue model. Our users win campaigns for change once every hour. We’re working for a world where no one is powerless, and where creating change is a part of everyday life. We’re just getting started and hope you’ll join us!

From mobilizing over 5 million people to investigate the fires in the Amazon, to mobilizing nearly 3 million against war and famine in Yemen, to large-scale mobilizations for the people of Iran and against the war in Ukraine, and calling for Racial Justice in the US, many movements were born on Change.org. Dozens of local, national, and international victories are happening every day thanks to the strength of our members who are changing the lives of people around the world. We want to help them go even further and we need your help!

About the role:

The successful functioning of democracy relies on informed citizens, yet many voters lack the information they need to make educated decisions in local elections, leaving them to vote uninformed or abstain from voting altogether. Over the next 6-9 months we endeavor to answer the following questions:

• How might we educate voters with a best-in-class mobile-first voting experience?
• How might we build tools for supervoters & endorsers to help inform fellow citizens?
• How might we engage candidates to interact with their potential constituents?

Key Outcomes:

• Lead the design and delivery of complex technical systems that support our Elections roadmap, setting engineering direction and standards that scale beyond a single team.
• Drive architectural decisions across multiple systems and services, ensuring high reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Serve as a multiplier by mentoring senior and mid-level engineers, elevating team technical capabilities and establishing engineering best practices.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Design, and Data to shape initiatives from inception through delivery, proactively addressing technical risk, dependencies, and system design early in the lifecycle.
• Lead incident reviews and contribute to post-mortem culture to improve system resilience and team learning.
• Translate complex technical ideas into accessible language for non-technical stakeholders, contributing to better-informed product and organizational decisions.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders—including campaign teams, legal, and operations—to ensure technical solutions are aligned with strategic goals and external user needs.
• This job is expected to participate in our on call rotation

The most important core competencies for the role are:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Ability to set and communicate long-term architectural vision.
• Expertise in designing robust, distributed systems with attention to performance, scalability, and observability.
• Experience reducing system complexity and improving maintainability across a codebase or platform.
• Track record of consistently delivering complex projects on time.
• Adept at estimating, managing dependencies, and identifying risks early.
• Ability to balance strategic architectural decisions with timely delivery.

Collaboration & Communication

• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and aligning priorities with PMs, TPMs, and Designers.
• Proven ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Skilled at balancing technical and product trade-offs.

Mentorship & Coaching

• Deep experience mentoring engineers in design, implementation, and long-term career growth.
• Strong commitment to improving team practices, code quality, and shared standards.

Full-Stack Engineering Proficiency

• Strong experience with modern web technologies:
  • Backend: Nest.js (or comparable Node.js), PostgreSQL, Prisma
  • Frontend: React, Next.js, Tailwind, TypeScript
  • DevOps: Docker, CI/CD, observability tools
• Proficiency in building and maintaining GraphQL/REST APIs.
• Experience working with data pipelines and integrating third-party datasets.
• Deep understanding of testing strategies, from unit to contract testing
• Bonus: Experience with LLMs and incorporating ML into production systems.

Target experience:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 2–3 years operating at a Staff (IC5) or equivalent level.
• Proven track record of leading complex initiatives across multiple systems, teams, or domains.
• Experience working in high-leverage roles with broad impact in a cross-functional product development environment.
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with product, legal, campaign, and operational stakeholders on user-facing initiatives.

Interested? Great! Here’s what you should know:

This is a full time role, and while we are open to folks living in the United States or Canada.

We’re currently able to hire staff based in the following US locations: Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), California (CA), Connecticut (CT), District of Columbia (DC), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Illinois (IL), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), New Jersey (NJ), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), Texas (TX), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), Wisconsin (WI). We’re able to hire staff based in the following Canadian provinces: AB, BC, ON.

Our compensation philosophy is based on pay equity. All of our salaries are determined before we launch a role – they are based on a predetermined salary scale, the level on that scale and the cost of labor for that location. The annual salary of a Staff Software Engineer is $230,000 USD in SF/NYC, and is $218,500 USD in Austin/Boston/Los Angeles/Seattle/DC/Chicago, and$195,500 USD outside of these areas.

Benefits and perks also vary based on location.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting amazing candidates like you, so please don’t hesitate to apply—we’d love to meet you. We also know it’s rare for someone to meet 100% of the qualifications. Please apply anyway!

We actively encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Change.org, we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We invest in programs to support our diverse workforce, offer inclusive onboarding experiences and affinity groups, celebrate the heritage of our staff, provide training on working across differences, and maintain fair and transparent salary scales. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, or culture.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for candidates with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

We’re committed to protecting your data. To learn more, please review our Change.org Job Applicant Privacy Policy.

We are legally required to conduct EEOC reporting. While this is required by the federal government, we recognize that it does not include all genders and ethnicities. We want you to know that Change.org celebrates all identities and we thank you for your participation.http://change.org/

Change.org participates in E-verify – click here to learn more.

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