Tech Lead, Plan

Stellic

Tech Lead for the Plan team at Stellic ensuring reliable academic planning systems while evolving product features. Lead backend engineering with a focus on high availability and performance.

Posted 6/10/2026full-timeSan Mateo • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $210,000 - $260,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PostgresSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the technical direction and evolution of the systems that power planning, pathways, scheduling, and registration core student-facing experiences across their academic journey.
Ensure registration systems perform predictably and efficiently during high-stakes registration periods, when students and institutions are counting on every interaction to work.
Design systems that handle concurrency and peak demand gracefully, with clear strategies for testing and validating behavior at scale.
Enable the product to evolve from degree-centric planning toward more flexible, pathway- and career-oriented experiences — without sacrificing the stability of the systems underneath.
Ensure quality by designing robust, scalable testing strategies that validate system behavior under the conditions that matter most, including peak load and high-concurrency registration scenarios.
Drive engineering excellence by defining and mentoring on best practices, design patterns, and code quality across the team.

Requirements

What you’ll need

5+ years of backend engineering experience operating at scale, with a track record of leading complex implementations as a technical lead
Experience owning and operating reliable systems in high-stakes workflows where performance and availability are critical
Strong intuition for designing systems that behave predictably under peak load and concurrency
Ability to balance product evolution with system stability and performance — you can push things forward without breaking what's already working
Strong proficiency in SQL and database optimization (PostgreSQL a plus)
Comfort with asynchronous / event-based architectures
Clear and effective communication skills for collaborating with product, design, and customer-facing teams
Deep curiosity, customer empathy, and commitment to engineering as a craft.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Exceptional benefits, including health insurance with Stellic covering 99% of your premium and 75% for dependents.
401(k), commuter benefits, and annual international retreats in incredible locations.

ATS Keywords

✓ Tailor your resume

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

backend engineeringSQLdatabase optimizationPostgreSQLasynchronous architecturesevent-based architecturessystem designtesting strategiesscalabilityconcurrency

Soft Skills

communication skillsleadershipmentoringcustomer empathycuriosityengineering excellencecollaborationproblem-solvingadaptabilitybalance