Senior Software Engineer, Premium Products - Academia.edu

About Us

Academia.edu is a venture-backed, for-profit, and profitable company based in San Francisco. We are recognized as the world’s leading platform for researchers and scholars to share work, discover research, and connect with academics globally. Our bold vision is to democratize and accelerate the world's research, enhancing the speed of scientific discovery and technological progress for the benefit of everyone. We imagine a world where accessing academic papers is effortless, keeping track of cutting-edge research is seamless and collaborating with researchers is easier than ever before. Our platform empowers millions of scholars worldwide to push the boundaries of human understanding. We believe that academic research is a lever that improves the progress of humanity, and our commitment to this mission drives everything we do.

Join us as we continue to redefine what's possible in the world of research. Discover careers that challenge, inspire and propel you toward a future where your ideas can truly change the world. At Academia.edu, we're not just shaping the future of research—we're shaping the future of possibilities.

Please note that this role is in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Our office comes alive on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays! Three times a week, our Bay Area team gathers in our office located in San Francisco's Financial District (580 California St) for All Hands meetings, collaborative sessions, innovation-driven brainstorming, and events that bring us closer together. Our space has everything we need—from cozy rooms for 1:1 mentoring and focused work to larger rooms designed for team activities.

What we're looking for

Someone who is excited about:

• Working on features that directly impact our bottom line.
• Iterating fast with a lot of cross-functional collaboration.
• Owning their projects end-to-end across the full stack.
• Deploying small, incremental changes multiple times per day.
• Maintaining a high bar for reliability of critical systems like payments.

Your skillset:

• Strong technical judgment in breaking down complex features into small, safe, deployable increments.
• Strong collaborative skills and experience working closely with product teams.
• Knowledge and use of common data structures and algorithms to solve problems.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to build solutions and products.
• Ability and willingness to learn new languages and technologies as needed.
• 5+ years of professional software development experience designing and building large scalable systems, consumer-facing web apps, or web platforms in a Unix/Linux environment.
• Professional level of coding proficiency with one of the following: Ruby, Python, or Node.js + Javascript or Node.js + Typescript. Must be willing to learn/work with Ruby on Rails stack.
• Solid understanding of databases, including data modeling and query optimization.
• Rest API/back-end coding in a scripting language.
• Web Front-end coding experience, e.g., JavaScript, Typescript, React.js, a plus.
• Experience with payment systems (especially Stripe or Braintree) is a plus.

Our Tech Stack:

• Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq
• PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch
• React + Typescript
• RSpec, Chromatic, Jest, Storybook
• CircleCI, Jenkins, Ansible, Terraform, Datadog
• AWS ecosystem (EC2, S3, RDS, Redshift, Aurora, and many others)
• You don’t need to know our tech stack, but you must be willing and able to learn and apply it quickly!

What you’ll work on:

• You'll be designing and building systems and web applications to make our user base more productive on our platform. Here are some things that we are currently working on:
• A/B test tooling that enables fast, easy tests so that we can explore a wider variety of experiments.
• Features that help academics find new opportunities for funding and improve their grant applications with generative AI.
• Technical payment system optimizations that decrease accidental subscription loss.
• Services that help academic authors understand the impact of their scholarship via text parsing and computation of bibliometrics.

What impact will you have?

• Researchers from all over the world give us fantastic feedback:
• “I go through all the articles in the bulk download, save the ones that are clearly going to be useful, and discard the remainder. This saves loads of time but also points me in directions I might not otherwise have thought of looking.”
• “The bulk downloads give me the chance to read more related articles as well as see what research is citing the article I am looking at. It also helps me rapidly expand my personal digital library of references.”
• See more: https://www.academia.edu

We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage: 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents
• Generous Time Off: 21 paid vacation days, 12 paid company holidays, and unlimited sick days; paid parental leave and other leaves for life’s needs; 6-week paid sabbatical every 4 years
• Flexible Work Arrangements: Flexible daily schedules within a hybrid work environment, annual remote-office budget, and monthly WFH internet stipend
• Competitive Compensation: Competitive salary, 401k plan, and stock options
• Mission-Driven Company: Join a mission-driven company to accelerate and democratize the world’s research

Learn more on our Careers Page!

Academia is a proud equal-opportunity employer and we are committed to hiring and supporting a diverse workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.