Full-Stack Software Engineer

About Straia

At Straia, we're building the AI-native intelligence layer for colleges and universities.

Today, colleges run on dozens of disconnected systems, forcing staff to spend hundreds of hours manually reconciling data, compiling reports, and tracking down insights. Straia changes that. We unify institutional data and layer on AI agents that answer questions, generate insights/visualizations, and automate repetitive workflows, transforming how colleges operate.

Over time, Straia will evolve into the core intelligence layer for institutional operations, where every function, from student advising to admissions to budgeting and resource planning, is supported by collaborative AI agents that understand each institution's unique data landscape.

We recently raised our pre-seed from a16z Speedrun, Reach Capital, and JFF Ventures, and are now hiring a Full Stack Engineer to help build the product that institutions use to interact with their data every day.

The Role

As a Full Stack Engineer, you'll work across our entire stack with our CTO (Nikki) and the rest of our engineering team — from the React frontend to the Node/TypeScript backend — to build the product surface where institutions interact with their data and AI agents.

This is a 0 → 1 opportunity to ship features end-to-end on a product that moves institutional data at scale, runs privately hosted frontier models, and delivers low-latency insights to non-technical users making real decisions about student outcomes.

You'll own meaningful chunks of the product from day one — designing, building, and shipping the interfaces and APIs that turn messy institutional data into clear, actionable answers. We move fast, keep the loop between idea and production short, and trust engineers to take real ownership of what they build.

We're looking for someone with high agency who's happiest shipping. The kind of engineer who picks up an ambiguous problem, drives it from blank page to production, and sweats the details that make a product feel great to use. If you thrive when expectations are high and the pace is fast, you'll feel right at home 🙂

What You'll Do

• Ship features end-to-end — Own work across the whole stack, from the React + Vite frontend to the Node + Express + TypeScript backend. You'll take features from design through delivery and iteration, and you'll care about how they feel for the people using them.

• Build the AI agent experience — Create the interfaces and APIs where non-technical users ask questions and get back insights, visualizations, and automated workflows. You'll make AI feel like a natural, first-class part of the product.

• Connect the product to data and models — Wire the application layer up to our data stack (Postgres + DuckDB) and model inference, and keep query and inference latency low enough that the product feels instantaneous.

• Own your work end-to-end — You won't just pick up tickets. You'll scope, build, and ship features with real autonomy, make pragmatic calls under ambiguity, and take genuine ownership of the things you deliver.

• Build internal tooling and automations — Help build the leverage that lets a small team operate like one ten times its size, automating away the things that slow engineers down.

• Care about quality and resilience — Treat observability, testing, and fault tolerance as part of the job, not an afterthought. You build things that are easy to understand, debug, and recover.

Who You Are

• Strong full-stack background — 4-6 years building and shipping production web applications across the stack, comfortable moving between frontend and backend in the same week.

• Fluent on the frontend — Solid experience with a modern frontend framework (React preferred) and an eye for building clean, intuitive interfaces for real users.

• Solid on the backend — Experienced building and operating production backend services and APIs, ideally in Node.js / TypeScript, with a good grasp of databases and data modeling.

• Comfortable with data — You've worked with relational databases and APIs in production. Experience with analytical or columnar databases (DuckDB, BigQuery) is a strong plus.

• Curious about AI integration — You don't need to be an ML engineer, but you're excited to integrate LLMs and models into a product and learn what makes inference reliable and fast at scale. Prior experience wrapping models or third-party APIs is a bonus.

• High agency — You take ownership, drive features from blank page to production, and don't wait to be told what to do next. You communicate your reasoning clearly and know when to move fast versus when to align first.

• Mission-driven — Excited about using technology to help universities make smarter, faster, more equitable decisions for their students.

Our Stack

• Cloud: GCP managed via Pulumi

• Data Layer: Postgres + DuckDB

• LLM Inference: Privately Hosted Frontier Model on GCP, plus API integrations with GPT, Gemini, and Claude

• Backend: Node.js + Express + TypeScript

• Frontend: React + Vite

Why Join Straia

• Be one of the first engineers at a venture-backed AI company redefining institutional intelligence in higher ed

• Ship product across the full stack — from AI agent experiences to the data and APIs behind them — and see your work in users' hands quickly

• Build the internal AI tooling that makes a small team absurdly productive. If you've ever wanted the mandate to automate everything that slows engineers down, this is it.

• Work directly with top-tier investors and advisors from a16z, Reach, and JFF Ventures

• Join a small, fast-moving team that works incredibly hard, ships fast, and still makes time for good food, laughs, and adventures. We take our work seriously, but not ourselves 🙂

• Build meaningful technology that directly impacts student success and equity across colleges nationwide

What We Offer

• Compensation: $150K–$180K + equity

• Location: San Francisco (in office 4 days a week)

• Benefits: Health (platinum insurance), dental, and vision