The Role
Lead the design, implementation, and delivery of user-facing features, driving complex technical initiatives across multiple teams, and mentoring engineers.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Quizlet:
At Quizlet, our mission is to help every learner achieve their outcomes in the most effective and delightful way. Our $1B+ learning platform serves tens of millions of students every month, including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and half of U.S. college students, powering over 2 billion learning interactions monthly.
We blend cognitive science with machine learning to personalize and enhance the learning experience for students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
Let’s Build the Future of Learning
Join us to design and deliver AI-powered learning tools that scale across the world and unlock human potential.
About the Team:
Quizlet's Engineering organization builds the core experiences that help millions of students and teachers achieve their learning goals. We collaborate across teams to achieve user-centric outcomes, focusing on developing intuitive interfaces, engaging learning tools, and robust, scalable systems.
You’ll be joining a passionate group of engineers, designers, product managers, and data scientists dedicated to solving real-world educational challenges. Our teams operate with autonomy, embrace experimentation, and are deeply committed to user-centric design. We value transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration at all levels.
About the Role:
We’re looking for a Senior Staff Engineer to lead the technical design, implementation, and delivery of user-facing features that are critical to Quizlet’s success. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you’ll operate across multiple teams, driving complex initiatives, engineering excellence, and building systems that serve millions of learners globally. This role spans core consumer experiences across web and mobile, including areas such as growth, engagement, subscriptions, and learning.
We’re happy to share that this is an onsite position in our San Francisco office. To help foster team collaboration, we require that employees be in the office a minimum of three days per week: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency, team partnership, and supports growth as an employee and organization.
In this role, you will:
- Lead Cross-Team Technical Strategy: Drive technical architecture, implementation, and delivery across multiple engineering teams building high-impact consumer experiences across learning, engagement, and growth.
- Operate in Ambiguity: Navigate evolving product spaces and undefined problem areas, identify the highest-leverage opportunities, and create clarity across engineering and cross-functional teams.
- Drive Systemic and Operational Excellence: Architect systems that are scalable, reliable, secure, and observable—ensuring high availability, low latency, and strong data integrity across critical user experiences.
- Collaborate Across Functions: Partner with product, design, data science, research, and other cross-functional teams to deliver impactful features that improve user experience, engagement, and business outcomes.
- Contribute to Tech Roadmaps: Align technical strategy with product vision, business goals, and user needs—shaping roadmaps that enable innovation, iteration speed, and long-term scalability.
- Mentor and Scale Teams: Coach engineers and technical leaders, elevating engineering quality and fostering a culture of strong ownership, autonomy, and sound technical decision-making.
- Partner & Ecosystem Collaboration: Work with internal platform teams and external partners where needed to ensure strong technical alignment and successful delivery of key initiatives.
What you bring to the table:
- 10+ years of engineering experience building and scaling distributed systems or consumer-facing platforms
- Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives with meaningful product and business impact
- Strong experience with backend technologies (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Golang) and/or frontend technologies (e.g., React, Angular) and/or mobile development (iOS, Android)
- Deep architectural expertise with a focus on performance, reliability, and scalability
- Strong communication and mentorship skills, with the ability to influence across engineering and leadership
- Experience aligning engineering execution with company-level priorities and goals
- A track record of improving existing systems to be more scalable, reliable, and maintainable
Bonus points if you have:
- Experience building and scaling consumer-facing or education-focused applications
- Experience working on products with high scale, performance, or data complexity
- Familiarity with mobile-first or multi-platform systems
- Experience with experimentation frameworks, personalization, or data-informed product development
- Hands-on involvement in incident management or operational excellence practices
- Full-stack experience across backend systems, web, and mobile clients
Compensation, Benefits & Perks:
- Quizlet is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Salary transparency helps to mitigate unfair hiring practices when it comes to discrimination and pay gaps. Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $231,000- $300,000, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
- Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
- 20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
- Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
- Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
- Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
- Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, and Wellness benefits
- 40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice
Why Join Quizlet?
🌎 Massive reach: 60M+ users, 1B+ interactions per week
🧠 Cutting-edge tech: Generative AI, adaptive learning, cognitive science
📈 Strong momentum: Top-tier investors, sustainable business, real traction
🎯 Mission-first: Work that makes a difference in people’s lives
🤝 Inclusive culture: Committed to equity, diversity, and belonging
We strive to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome!
We work to create a holistic interview process, where both Quizlet and candidates have an opportunity to view what it would be like to work together, in exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.
We provide a transparent setting that gives a comprehensive view of who we are!
In Closing:
At Quizlet, we’re excited about passionate people joining our team—even if you don’t check every box on the requirements list. We value unique perspectives and believe everyone has something meaningful to contribute. Our culture is all about taking initiative, learning through challenges, and striving for high-quality work while staying curious and open to new ideas. We believe in honest, respectful communication, thoughtful collaboration, and creating a supportive space where everyone can grow and succeed together.”
Quizlet’s success as an online learning community depends on a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As an equal opportunity employer and a tech company committed to societal change, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Come join us!
To All Recruiters and Placement Agencies:
At this time, Quizlet does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and/or profiles.
Please do not forward unsolicited agency resumes to our website or to any Quizlet employee. Quizlet will not pay fees to any third-party agency or firm nor will it be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes received will be considered the property of Quizlet.
#LI-onsite
Skills Required
- 10+ years of engineering experience
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical initiatives
- Strong experience building backend and frontend systems
- Deep architectural expertise in large-scale systems
- Strong communication and mentorship skills
Quizlet Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Quizlet and has not been reviewed or approved by Quizlet.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered competitive across many roles, with strong base salaries and dollar‑denominated pay benefiting remote and lower cost‑of‑living locations. Feedback suggests overall satisfaction with total compensation in technical and leadership tracks.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants are described as healthy and improving over time, contributing meaningfully to total compensation. Stock options are a standard part of packages and are viewed as a notable plus.
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Healthcare Strength — Employer‑paid medical, dental, and vision premiums are covered fully for employees and substantially for dependents, alongside disability coverage. This level of coverage reduces out‑of‑pocket costs and supports wellbeing.
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The Company
What We Do
Quizlet is a leading consumer learning brand that builds learning tools to inspire and empower students and teachers. Our team is already supporting a user base of over 60 million active users a month. We're also among the top 20 U.S. websites and top education apps for iOS and Android - and it's only the beginning. We’re a fast-growing Series C startup, valued at $1 Billion and backed by Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, Icon Ventures, Owl Ventures, Altos Ventures and General Atlantic. With our massive reach and focus on delivering high-quality innovative learning tools, we're having a major global impact on education.
