Principal Full Stack Software Engineer (Backend Heavy)

Role: Principal Full Stack Software Engineer (Backend Heavy)

Type: Full-Time

Compensation: Competitive salary

Years of experience: 5-7 years

Note: We will not work with external consulting companies. Please do not send us emails.

We are looking to hire a Principal Engineer to lead and scale a small but talented engineering team for AlgoEd, a fast growing platform for prestigious online academic competitions.

This is a position with a competitive salary and equity options, with significant growth potential, including a path to CTO for the right candidate.

What to expect?

A high-intensity, high-accountability environment with a fast-moving, agile culture. You must thrive under pressure, adapt quickly to changes, and pivot when needed.

This role requires both hands-on coding and management. We are looking for a hands-on leader who will spend a significant amount of time coding while also guiding a small, elite tech team to execute with speed and precision.

About AlgoEd

AlgoEd is a platform for curated, prestigious online academic competitions. We provide an end-to-end tech and marketing solution for academic competitions—handling everything from registration to judging and award allocation.

We make the experience of hosting and participating in competitions smooth, memorable, and easy.

We partner with world-class organizations, including:

🏆 Harvard Crimson | 🏆 Harvard Political Review | 🏆 MIT Entrepreneurship Club | 🏆 MIT EWB | 🏆 Cornell Undergraduate Research Magazine | 🏆 PennSEM (Wharton, UPenn) | 🏆 Ascend Berkeley | 🏆 Dartmouth Sings

Offering:

🚀 Lead the technical direction of a rapidly growing platform

🔥 Work on high-scale, real-time systems used by thousands of concurrent users

👥 Collaborate with a high-caliber founding team

⚡ Fast-paced execution with full ownership over the backend & frontend

🏆 Direct impact on more accessible and equitable education

Requirements:

• Proven experience leading and building high-scale web applications (4-6 years)
• Strong full-stack development skills – Our current stack: Angular, Node.js
• Expertise in scaling concurrent systems
• Strong architectural skills – building a clean, modular, scalable codebase
• Relentless problem-solving mindset – able to fix inefficiencies and improve an existing codebase
• Database, Cloud & DevOps mastery
• Fast execution, high ownership – thrives in a startup environment, shipping without red tape
• Ability to adapt and quickly learn new technologies, with a strong curiosity and drive for continuous improvement
• Strong grasp of the latest AI coding tools (e.g. Cursor, Codeium) and how to integrate them into a modern development workflow to enhance productivity and code quality.