ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — Artstor, JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome historical barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to each other and our well-being, and are committed to building and sustaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
The Role
We are welcoming a Senior Software Engineer (Full-Stack) to be part of our dedicated Search team. As a full-stack software engineer at ITHAKA, you’ll have an opportunity to contribute to high-impact products that help make education accessible for everyone. As a valued member of the Search team, your primary focus will be refining the search and discovery experience for all JSTOR users.
Why Join Us?
- Autonomy: Empowerment to choose the best tools and languages to solve problems.
- Continuous deployment: Contribute to a streamlined development process through automated continuous delivery pipeline.
- Impact: Directly contribute to products reaching millions of users.
- Open source contribution: Opportunities to give back to the community.
- Tech blog: Explore more about what we do through our blog.
Responsibilities
As a Senior Software Engineer (Full-Stack) on our Search team, you will:
- Collaborate with Product Manager, Designer, User Researcher, Agile Delivery Lead, Data Scientists, Metadata Librarians, and Engineering team members to explore, shape, and develop new Search & Discover product experiences from ideation to implementation at scale.
- Design, develop, and maintain large-scale distributed software services and solutions that are secure, reliable, scalable, and maintainable in a CI/CD environment.
- Engage with stakeholders to understand their needs and deliver sustainable solutions.
- Utilize web analytics to inform product discovery and measure key performance indicators.
- Optimize application performance using APM tools.
- Provide mentorship and guidance to team members.
- Advocate for the adoption of innovative technologies and methodologies.
- Contribute to assessment of risk factors, cost-effectiveness, resource allocation, and other considerations essential for supporting technology enhancements.
- Provide reliable, responsive support and incident resolutions during on-call shifts (PagerDuty).
Experience and Skills
- 5+ years of professional experience as a full-stack software engineer building large-scale, distributed web applications using AWS cloud infrastructure services.
- Demonstrated proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript (React, Vue, Angular, Node.js) and Python (Django, FastAPI).
- Hands-on experience with REST or GraphQL APIs, version control systems (GitHub/GitLab), and testing frameworks (JUnit, Jest, pytest, Playwright), along with a commitment to test-driven development (TDD) practices.
- Proficiency in using dependency management and project build tools like Maven, NPM/Yarn, Webpack, or bundler.
- Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP).
- Exceptional communication skills and a commitment to continuous improvement.
Preferred Experience and Skills
- Proficiency in using profiling tools (Graphite, Grafana, Prometheus, AppDynamics) for performance optimization.
- Experience with cache management, content delivery, and edge application security using CDNs (Fastly, CloudFront).
- Experience with data modeling in relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB).
- Experience in securing large-scale applications against vulnerability exploits.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach engineers, fostering both technical and interpersonal development.
- Interest or experience in generative AI, search/information retrieval systems, and machine learning (LangChain, OpenAI).
You’re not expected to be an expert in every technology listed. Accomplished tech professionals have diverse experiences and can acquire new skills. We value your passion for continuous improvement and your ability to optimize for clarity, reliability, and performance. You will explore new technologies with our support through onboarding, mentorship, and continuous learning.
Work Authorization and Sponsorship
ITHAKA is not currently considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States.
Compensation and Benefits
At ITHAKA we believe in openness and equity. Part of living those values is our commitment to clarity about salary ranges, so candidates know what to expect. The starting salary for this position ranges from $108,000 - $135,455 per year. Starting pay may vary with job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. At present, our total compensation package for benefits-eligible employees includes medical, dental, and vision plans, an employer-paid 10% retirement contribution, paid parental and caregiver leave, 22 days of paid time off, 11 paid holidays, up to 12 sick days, wellness benefits, and more. Please note that ITHAKA, at its discretion, may make changes to its benefits programs from time to time.
#LI-JS1 #LI-REMOTE
We are committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust. We take inclusion seriously. Belonging is one of our core values, and it shows in our vibrant culture. People from a wide range of backgrounds work at ITHAKA, and we believe that unique perspectives help us realize new insights and build better solutions.
We want to work with people who are passionate about ideas like these and who wish to contribute their perspectives and talents to ITHAKA’s mission. We enthusiastically welcome applications from people of all underrepresented backgrounds and credentials. We want to hear your story and include your perspective in the transformative work we aim to do.
Learn more about Working at ITHAKA.
Apply Now:
Although ITHAKA has physical offices in New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan, our employees are distributed across the continental United States. At this time, we’re not considering candidates who are unable to work and reside in the continental U.S.
Candidates may apply by submitting an application online through our career site, if you have any questions about your application, please contact us at [email protected]. ITHAKA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations, if there’s anything we can do to accommodate any portion of the application or hiring process, please contact us at [email protected].
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, domestic violence victim status, veteran status, disability, history of disability or perceived disability, or other status protected by law. We invite you to read our Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Statement. ITHAKA cares about your privacy, learn more about our Applicant Privacy Notice.
What We Do
ITHAKA's mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. We started in 1995 with a simple idea: digitize the materials in university and college libraries to preserve them and make them available online to people everywhere. Today, we do that and so much more.
Our 300+ staff - everyone from software developers, designers, and editors, to quantitative analysts, human resource specialists, and marketers - work to deliver four services developed to advance our mission.
JSTOR and Artstor are digital platforms expanding access to knowledge by making thousands of books, journals, images, and primary sources available to millions of students and researchers in 170 countries.
Portico is a global archive preserving nearly 500 terabytes of digital research content for libraries and publishers to ensure it's accessible for future generations.
Ithaka S+R is a strategic consulting group providing research to help colleges, universities, and museums with challenges like enrolling more low-income students and veterans, increasing diversity in their workforce, transitioning to digital environments, improving learning outcomes and graduation rates through the use of adaptive learning technologies, and re-vamping what college means through an inclusive focus on micro-credentials.
