Senior Software Developer

Acuity Insights (Headquarters: Canada)

JavaScript TypeScript Go Meteor Heroku MongoDB React AWS API Gateway Lambda DynamoDB Full Stack Remote Cloud Distributed Systems Mentoring System Design Migration Full Stack Engineer

**Company Overview:**
Acuity Insights is on a mission to help uncover and nurture everyone’s full potential. We provide innovative solutions for higher education, focusing on holistic success from admissions to graduation. Our products include Casper (soft skills assessment for admissions), One45 (program management for medical schools), and Analytics (data insights for program improvement). We operate across North America, the U.K., Australia, and Saudi Arabia, serving over 600 higher education programs and impacting over 1 million applicants. We value caring, curiosity, and drive, fostering a culture of collaboration, support, and continuous improvement.

**Role Overview:**
Join Acuity Insights’ startup-to-scaleup journey as a Senior Software Developer. In this fully remote role, working within EST and PST time zones from anywhere in Canada, you’ll be part of a team modernizing our assessment platform, Casper. You’ll build new systems, maintain existing systems, lead design decisions, and mentor fellow developers.

**Responsibilities & Projects:**
- Contribute significantly to a multi-year migration project, moving our core Casper test system from a Meteor/MongoDB stack (on Heroku) to a modern stack based on React, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB.
- Design, develop, and maintain full-stack web applications, including UIs, APIs, database schemas, and deployment pipelines.
- Lead design discussions, articulate tradeoffs (short vs. long-term impact), and influence technical direction through productive debate and data-driven opinions.
- Act as a bridge between Product leaders and the development team, ensuring technical feasibility informs feature prioritization.
- Champion and guide quality improvements using practices like pair programming, code reviews, automated testing (unit, integration, end-to-end), feature flagging, monitoring, and alarming.
- Mentor junior and intermediate developers, providing specific, actionable feedback to foster their growth and ensure high code quality standards.
- Create and maintain system and architecture documentation (diagrams, wikis).
- Communicate effectively through Slack, documentation, and video calls.

**Required Skills & Experience:**
- Strong experience with backend JavaScript/TypeScript, or the ability to learn it quickly.
- Solid understanding and experience with distributed systems and cloud platforms (AWS experience highly preferred: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB).
- Proven ability to work across the full stack (frontend, backend, database, infrastructure).
- Experience working on and ideally leading large system migrations. Learning from both successful and challenging migration projects is a plus.
- Deep curiosity and ability to quickly master new technologies.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Experience with mentoring developers and providing constructive feedback.
- Familiarity with modern software development practices (CI/CD, automated testing, code reviews, monitoring).

**Ideal Candidate:**
- A quality-focused full-stack developer with strong technical proficiency.
- Looking to advance their career in a people-centric company that prioritizes work-life balance and continuous growth.
- Passionate about building products with meaningful social impact.
- Comfortable working autonomously in a remote setting.
- Aligns with our values: Caring, Curious, and Driven.

**Tech Stack:**
JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Meteor, MongoDB, Heroku, React, AWS (API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB).

**Perks & Benefits:**
- Competitive salary within Canada ($135,000 - $175,000 CAD range for this role).
- Remote-first company: Work from anywhere in Canada (EST ±4 time zones supported).
- Flexible work hours and self-directed vacation policy (most take 4-6 weeks annually).
- Additional time off: Two-week year-end company closure, extra Friday off each month (Feb-Nov).
- $3,000 annual learning budget.
- Employee stock option plan.
- GRSP matching program (up to 2% of salary).
- Comprehensive health benefits from Day 1 (Equitable Life of Canada, Nivati).
- Parental leave top-up (16 weeks beyond EI).