Senior Software Engineer, JSTOR Stewardship

ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to members of our community and to each other, and we are committed to building and sustaining a culture where everyone can thrive.

Level 

Depending on experience and qualifications, ITHAKA is open to considering candidates in the following levels:

Mid-Level, Software Engineer:

• Expected to bring strong technical skills and adaptability, with opportunities to grow into leadership or more autonomous roles.


• Focuses on hands-on contributions and learning through collaboration on challenging projects.


• 2 + years of experience

Senior-level, Senior Software Engineer:

• Expected to lead with a high degree of autonomy, taking ownership of complex initiatives and driving innovation.


• Will mentor junior engineers, contributing to their growth and the team’s overall expertise.


• Plays a key role in shaping strategic goals and optimizing workflows for scalability and impact. 


• 5+ year of experience

The Role

ITHAKA is looking for a Mid/Senior Software Engineer (Frontend Focus) to join the JSTOR Stewardship team.

In this role, you'll build modern, user-centered web applications that help millions of learners, educators, and librarians discover and engage with JSTOR content. While your primary expertise will be frontend engineering, you'll lead complex technical initiatives across multiple features or systems, owning work from discovery and technical design through deployment, experimentation, and production operations.

You'll work in a cross-functional product team alongside Product, Design, User Research, Data Science, and Engineering to solve meaningful user problems, deliver intuitive and accessible experiences, and continuously improve our products through experimentation, analytics, and AI-assisted capabilities. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll combine strong technical execution with product thinking—using user insights, experimentation, and engineering judgment to help shape solutions that deliver meaningful customer and business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, test, deploy, monitor, and maintain production-grade web applications.


• Develop intuitive, performant, reliable, and accessible user interfaces with a strong focus on user experience.


• Build and integrate APIs and backend services to deliver end-to-end product experiences.


• Instrument applications for analytics, experimentation, and observability that enable data-informed product decisions.


• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, User Research, Data Science, and Engineering to identify user problems, validate solutions, and iterate based on evidence.


• Contribute to technical documentation and design artifacts that help the team share knowledge and communicate architectural decisions.


• Use product, operational, and engineering metrics to evaluate technical decisions and continuously improve product quality and engineering effectiveness.


• Participate in an on-call rotation supporting production systems.

• Occasional travel, comprising less than 10% of the time, may be necessary, with a primary focus on visits to our Michigan and New York offices.

Additional responsibilities for senior level include:

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for complex initiatives, from discovery through production, partnering with Product and Design to balance user needs, business goals, and engineering tradeoffs.


• Guide technical design and architecture decisions within the team’s product area to improve scalability, maintainability, reliability, and developer experience.


• Identify technical debt, operational risks, and opportunities to improve engineering practices and the long-term health of the team’s systems.


• Mentor engineers through code reviews, technical design discussions, pair programming, and day-to-day collaboration.

Experience and Skills

You don't need experience with every technology listed above. We're looking for engineers with strong technical fundamentals, product thinking, sound engineering judgment, and a high degree of ownership. People who are curious, collaborative, enjoy solving meaningful problems, and raise the technical bar for those around them will thrive in this role.

• Experience building production web applications with React, Vue, or a similar framework, using TypeScript, modern HTML and CSS, and component-based architecture.


• Strong frontend skills, including responsive design, accessibility, performance, and maintainable application architecture.


• Experience integrating frontend applications with REST or GraphQL APIs, and the ability to contribute to GraphQL services and AWS Lambda functions using Node.js, Python, or similar technologies.


• Experience with automated testing, production debugging, and monitoring or observability practices.


• Familiarity with CI/CD and cloud-hosted application deployment workflows.


• Experience with Git-based development, code reviews, and technical documentation.


• Ability to work collaboratively across engineering and with product and design partners, and to communicate technical decisions and tradeoffs clearly.


• Ability to use user feedback, product data, or operational metrics to inform engineering decisions and improve user experiences.

For the senior-level role, in addition to the qualifications mentioned above, the following experience and skills are required:

• Demonstrated experience leading complex technical initiatives from concept through production and operation, including work with ambiguous requirements.


• Ability to guide technical decisions and balance user needs, business priorities, engineering quality, and long-term maintainability.


• Experience helping other engineers grow through technical guidance, code review, or mentoring.

Experience building AI-powered product experiences or integrating LLMs into customer-facing applications is a plus.

Work Authorization and Sponsorship 

ITHAKA is not currently considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) to work in the United States.

Compensation and Benefits

At ITHAKA we believe in openness and fair pay. Part of living those values is our commitment to clarity about salary ranges, so candidates know what to expect. The starting salary for a mid-level Software Engineer position ranges from $97,649 - $122,061. The starting salary for the Senior Software Engineer position ranges from $112,240 - $140,300 per year. Starting pay may vary with job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. At present, our total compensation package for benefits-eligible employees includes medical, dental, and vision plans, an employer-paid 10% retirement contribution, paid parental and caregiver leave, 22 days of paid time off, 11 paid holidays, up to 12 paid sick days, wellness benefits, and more. Please note that ITHAKA, at its discretion, may make changes to its benefits programs from time to time.