At Crisis Text Line, engineering, product, and design work as one team to create a trusted, innovative, and deeply human-centered Crisis Care Platform. Our technology supports millions of people in moments of need and empowers global partners to deliver life-saving support at scale.
We’re seeking a senior full-stack engineer who is passionate about shipping production-ready software, owning high-impact features end-to-end, and tackling complex technical challenges that have real-world impact.
Role:As a Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer, you will design, build, deploy, and operate core platform features used by people in their most vulnerable moments. You’ll help evolve our API-first, services-driven architecture while raising the bar on security, reliability, and developer experience.
This is a highly hands-on role for engineers who want deep ownership, technical influence, and mission-driven impact.
Our Stack
You’ll work across a modern, cloud-based environment, including:
- Backend: Services, APIs (GraphQL), relational databases
- Frontend: Full-stack ownership of user-facing and internal tools
- Cloud: AWS
- Infrastructure: Terraform (nice to have)
- Observability: Datadog, Grafana
- CI/CD: Automated pipelines and DevOps-first culture
- Own features end-to-end: Design, build, test, ship, and maintain full-stack features in production.
- Solve hard problems: Break down ambiguous technical challenges and deliver scalable, secure solutions.
- Champion security: Contribute to authentication, authorization, and platform security practices.
- Build for scale: Improve service architecture, APIs, and system reliability as we grow globally.
- Collaborate deeply: Partner with product, design, and engineering peers to deliver high-impact solutions.
- Raise engineering quality: Improve testing, CI/CD, observability, and developer workflows.
- Support production: Participate in on-call rotation to ensure platform reliability.
- 6+ years of experience programming in a high-level language
- 4+ years of experience in full-stack development
- Experience working with telemetry tools such as Datadog or Grafana
- Experience working with Terraform is a plus
- Experience working within cloud environments (AWS).
- Hands‑on experience with PHP (Symfony framework), Node.js, React/Redux, and Golang
- Strong experience working with relational databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, as well as caching technologies like Redis
- Experience building and maintaining REST‑based APIs and GraphQL APIs
- Strong problem-solving skills, ability to communicate analysis and reasoning clearly
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience acting as a security champion, including threat modeling, vulnerability remediation, or leading secure coding practices.
- Hands-on experience building or supporting authentication and identity systems (OAuth, SSO, JWT, RBAC, identity providers).
- Experience designing or evolving service-oriented or API-first architectures.
- Experience in improving or owning CI/CD infrastructure, deployment automation, and release processes.
- Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code, especially Terraform.
- Experience designing for high availability, performance, and observability at scale.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor other engineers, elevate code quality, and contribute to architectural discussions.
- Background working in mission-driven, regulated, or high-trust environments (e.g., healthcare, nonprofit, financial services).
- Strong product mindset with the ability to translate user and business needs into clean, scalable technical solutions.
Reliable High-Speed Internet Required: Must have a stable high-speed internet connection to support seamless remote collaboration, virtual meetings, online job tasks, etc.
The full salary range for this position, across all United States geographies, is $115,192 to $160,018. The upper portion of the salary range is typically reserved for existing employees who demonstrate strong performance over time. Starting salary will vary by location, qualifications, and prior experience; during the interview process, candidates will learn the starting salary range applicable for their location. We pay competitively in the tech-forward nonprofit space and offer a robust benefits package.
Only candidates in the following states will be eligible for employment: CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, MD, MA, MI, MO, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, PA, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA
Benefits & Well-Being
Crisis Text Line offers thoughtfully designed, equity-centered benefits that support holistic wellness, financial security, and flexibility. Our benefits are built to meet people where they are and reduce barriers to care and sustainability.
Highlights include:
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision options that prioritize accessibility and financial peace of mind
- Employer-funded HSA contributions
- Generous PTO, sick time, and 19 paid holidays with a winter break
- 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave after 26 consecutive weeks of service
- Monthly wellness and mental health stipends
- Home office and professional development stipends
- 403(b) retirement plan with employer contribution
- Sabbatical after 3 years of service
Benefits are for U.S.-based employees; international benefits may vary.
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What We Do
Millions of people are quietly suffering every day. They quietly struggle with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bullying, suicidal thoughts, and more. Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support for people in crisis in the United States via a medium people already use and trust: text. And we use insights from our work to develop and share innovations in prevention, treatment, and long-term care. Crisis Text Line trains volunteers (like you!) to support people in crisis. With over 70 million crisis messages processed to date, the org is growing quickly, and so is the need. Crisis Text Line is a not-for-profit tech start-up, born from the rib of DoSomething.org.
