Senior Software Engineer, Emerging Product at GiveCampus

Job description

GiveCampus is the world's leading fundraising platform for non-profit educational institutions. Trusted by millions of donors and 1,300+ colleges, universities, and K-12 schools, our mission is to help advance the quality, the affordability, and the accessibility of education. At our current pace, we will facilitate $100 billion in charitable giving over the next decade–enough money to send more than 1 million students to college, tuition-free. GiveCampus is backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, but we’re also practitioners of Sustainable Growth : we’ve made the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies each of the last five years and we’ve been profitable nine of the last 10. In 2025, we celebrated a $140 million growth investment that included a major liquidity event for GiveCampus employees–the second in less than three years. Our purpose-driven team of 130+ is located in 30+ states across the US: team members work from anywhere they choose. We have a beautiful 12,000sf office in Washington, DC that is available for people to use whenever they want, and we regularly organize team meet-ups, visit partner institutions, and host retreats in various locations. While we operate at meaningful scale, we’re still small relative to the commercial and social good opportunities in front of us. Every GiveCampus employee plays a meaningful role in shaping what comes next, and we're growing the team in support of our ambitious plans–including a $100 million investment in AI product development. If you believe in the transformative power of education and want to join a fast-growing, mission-driven company, you’ll fit right in. Location: This is a remote-first role based in the U.S. While we embrace flexible, distributed work, we also value in-person connection. Team members are expected to attend multiple company-wide and team-specific onsites throughout the year. About the team At GiveCampus, we build high-impact teams that operate like a startup within the startup—nimble, empowered, and laser-focused on solving specific challenges with real urgency and measurable outcomes. This role is part of one such dedicated Business Unit (BU): a lean, entrepreneurial team pushing a brand-new product from zero to one. About the role We’re hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help shape GC Gift Officer, a product that helps professional fundraisers, student programs, and AI agents at schools manage donor relationships and raise more money for education. Used by a rapidly growing number of schools, it combines substantial technical depth with a product direction that’s still evolving. Our small, autonomous business unit operates with the urgency and adaptability of an early-stage startup as we work toward product-market fit. You’ll help determine what we build and take responsibility for making it work. That means working closely with product, design, and customer-facing teammates to understand problems, challenge assumptions, and ship useful improvements quickly. Your work might involve building a full-stack feature, prototyping an idea, untangling a difficult production issue, or joining a customer call to understand where a workflow falls short. We especially value startup and early-stage experience: you’ve worked with incomplete information, taken ownership beyond a narrowly defined role, and changed direction as you learned. You’re comfortable getting deep into an existing system and resourceful about finding a path forward. You bring the judgment to know when a focused experiment will answer the question and when reliability, performance, or maintainability needs deeper investment. This is an opportunity to influence both the software and the business it supports. You’ll stay close to customers, see the results of your work, and help a small team turn early adoption into lasting product-market fit. What you'll do Own problems from discovery through production. Help define the problem, shape the solution, implement and deploy it, and follow through on how it performs for customers. Build across the stack. Deliver full-stack features and improvements, contributing wherever the problem takes you — from user interfaces and backend services to integrations, data, and infrastructure. Help decide what we build and why. Work with product, design, and business unit teammates to evaluate opportunities, challenge assumptions, and identify the useful next step. Experiment, ship, and learn quickly. Use prototypes, incremental releases, customer feedback, and usage data to test ideas. Adjust or retire approaches when the evidence points elsewhere. Stay close to customers. Join customer conversations and partner with onboarding and customer success teams to understand real workflows, investigate friction, and uncover opportunities. Evolve a complex product. Make architecture decisions, simplify existing systems, and address technical constraints that slow delivery or limit what customers can accomplish. Keep the product dependable. Investigate production issues and improve performance, reliability, security, and maintainability, using judgment to balance immediate needs with longer-term investments. Make the team stronger. Share context, mentor teammates, contribute thoughtful code reviews, and help improve engineering practices and hiring as the business unit grows. What you bring 8+ years of experience building software in startup-like environments. Full-stack engineering experience: proficiency in JavaScript, Ruby, or Python; experience with Rails or a comparable web framework; and experience with React or another frontend framework, PostgreSQL, RESTful APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, etc.). Passion for building with users, not just for them—you’re comfortable joining user interviews, shadowing onboarding, or jumping into metrics. Clear, asynchronous communication skills — especially important in our distributed environment. Proven ability to prioritize ruthlessly, ship continuously, and solve problems creatively. Appetite for wearing many hats, operating with autonomy, and solving messy first-time problems. Comfort and curiosity using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Code Interpreter, Claude, etc.) to boost speed, reduce toil, and elevate quality. Bonus points for Experience building and maintaining production applications with Ruby on Rails. Previous experience in a founding or early engineer role. Familiarity with education, fundraising, or donor engagement platforms. Exposure to low-code tools, internal platforms, or scrappy MVP development. Past contributions to product design, GTM strategy, or customer success efforts. Experience automating workflows or building with/around AI-powered systems. What you'll love about us A mission that matters: helping schools fund futures. An engineering org that values craft, autonomy, and impact. The opportunity to work at the cutting edge of product incubation inside a mission-driven company. Competitive compensation, vacation, wellness benefits, and more. A culture that values deep work, clear priorities, and rolling up our sleeves to get things done. Ready to build something that matters from the ground up? Apply now—we can’t wait to meet you. Ready to apply? Be sure to keep an eye on your spam and promotions boxes in case our emails end up there! At GiveCampus, we value diversity and we pledge to foster an environment of support, inclusivity, and learning, both on the job and throughout the application process. In this spirit, we encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply. GiveCampus is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applicants and employees are not discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws. If you feel like you don't meet all of the requirements for this role, please apply anyways. We know confidence gaps and imposter syndrome often get in the way of connecting with incredible people, and we don't want them to prevent us from meeting you.

Requirements

Must-haves

This is an opportunity to influence both the software and the business it supports. You’ll stay close to customers, see the results of your work, and help a small team turn early adoption into lasting product-market fit.
Own problems from discovery through production. Help define the problem, shape the solution, implement and deploy it, and follow through on how it performs for customers.
Build across the stack. Deliver full-stack features and improvements, contributing wherever the problem takes you — from user interfaces and backend services to integrations, data, and infrastructure.
Help decide what we build and why. Work with product, design, and business unit teammates to evaluate opportunities, challenge assumptions, and identify the useful next step.
Experiment, ship, and learn quickly. Use prototypes, incremental releases, customer feedback, and usage data to test ideas. Adjust or retire approaches when the evidence points elsewhere.
Stay close to customers. Join customer conversations and partner with onboarding and customer success teams to understand real workflows, investigate friction, and uncover opportunities.
Evolve a complex product. Make architecture decisions, simplify existing systems, and address technical constraints that slow delivery or limit what customers can accomplish.
Keep the product dependable. Investigate production issues and improve performance, reliability, security, and maintainability, using judgment to balance immediate needs with longer-term investments.
Make the team stronger. Share context, mentor teammates, contribute thoughtful code reviews, and help improve engineering practices and hiring as the business unit grows.
8+ years of experience building software in startup-like environments.
Passion for building with users, not just for them—you’re comfortable joining user interviews, shadowing onboarding, or jumping into metrics.
Clear, asynchronous communication skills — especially important in our distributed environment.
Proven ability to prioritize ruthlessly, ship continuously, and solve problems creatively.
Appetite for wearing many hats, operating with autonomy, and solving messy first-time problems.
Comfort and curiosity using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Code Interpreter, Claude, etc.) to boost speed, reduce toil, and elevate quality.
Experience building and maintaining production applications with Ruby on Rails.
Previous experience in a founding or early engineer role.
Familiarity with education, fundraising, or donor engagement platforms.
Exposure to low-code tools, internal platforms, or scrappy MVP development.
Past contributions to product design, GTM strategy, or customer success efforts.
Experience automating workflows or building with/around AI-powered systems.
What you'll love about us
A mission that matters: helping schools fund futures.

Nice-to-haves

Bonus points for

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Benefits

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