Senior Software Engineer

The University of Southern California (USC), founded in 1880, is located in the heart of downtown L.A. and is the largest private employer in the City of Los Angeles. As an employee of USC, you will be a part of a world-class research university and a member of the “Trojan Family,” which is comprised of the faculty, staff, and students that make the university a great place to work.  

The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences is seeking a part-time, fixed-term, talented and collaborative Senior Software Engineer in the Psychology Department. The largest and oldest of the USC schools, USC Dornsife functions as the academic core of the university, offering courses and advancing knowledge across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

The Senior Software Engineer will join our interdisciplinary research team in building an interactive, online learning platform designed to supplement key components of the proven Pathways-to-Success intervention program for 8th graders. This platform will provide an alternative to the classroom activities for classes lacking teachers and for students who have missed a session or multiple sessions with an accessible digital environment to program to engage the core activities and experience the take-homes of these sessions.

You’ll focus on two main responsibilities:

Developing a scalable, user-friendly web application in close collaboration with researchers, subject matter experts, engineers, and a UI/UX designer. Maintaining and improving the existing Pathways-to-Success teacher resource website.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and a UI/UX Designer to align technical development with user needs, program goals, and content structure.
• Translate wireframes and prototypes into a functional, scalable web application with intuitive navigation, clear workflows, and collaborative features.
• Coordinate with the UI/UX Designer to ensure seamless design-to-development handoff and high implementation fidelity.
• Maintain and improve the existing Pathways-to-Success teacher resource website, focusing on backend maintainability and performance.
• Implement observability tools (logs, metrics) and write documentation and unit tests to support debugging, transparency, and long-term collaboration.
• Support ongoing user research and usability testing, iterating based on feedback and analytics to enhance design and functionality.
• Ensure the platform adheres to accessibility standards, is fully responsive, and maintains a consistent visual and interaction design system.

Basic Qualifications (Required Skills/ Experience):

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in computer science or computer engineering.
• 5+ years of professional experience in software development.
• Strong proficiency in the following Frontend technologies: Typescript, React, Redux.
• Strong proficiency in Backend technologies: Node.js.
• Solid experience working with SQL databases.
• Skilled in using debugging and development tools such as Chrome DevTools and Postman.
• Demonstrated experience managing end-to-end web applications, with a solid understanding of backend API best practices and server maintenance.
• Basic proficiency with UI/UX design tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD) and prototyping tools (e.g., InVision, Axure, Framer).
• Familiar with responsive design principles and web accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG).
• Exposure to business intelligence platforms like Metabase or Tableau is a bonus.

Preferred Qualifications (Desired Skills/Experience):

• Familiarity with the Pathways-to-Success program, including the core intervention design and the key active ingredients meant to be invoked by each session.
• Proficiency with tools specific to our stack: Material UI, Fastify.js, PostgreSQL, Metabase
• Experience conducting and synthesizing insights from user research and usability testing.
• Strong grasp of interaction design, user flows, and information architecture.
   

What will set you apart?

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with non-technical stakeholders.
• Proven track record in designing learning platforms and/or intuitive, user-friendly web applications.
• A collaborative team player with experience contributing to multidisciplinary teams.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple project components simultaneously.
• Meticulous attention to detail and a passion for crafting refined, user-centered experiences that are both functional and visually cohesive.
• Deep empathy for users and a strong interest in education, learning science, or teacher development is highly valued.
• Bonus skills: experience running A/B experiments, using FeatureFlags to test new features, and locally deploying projects for feature demonstrations.

Why Join Us?

This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of psychological science, education research, and technology. You will help shape a platform that supports teacher growth and student success at scale. Your engineering expertise will contribute directly to real-world impact in classrooms.

Our team is also actively researching how to build and iterate on large language models (LLMs) for outcome evaluations of the Pathways-to-Success program, offering further opportunities for innovation at the frontier of AI and education.

Salary range: The monthly salary range for this position is $8,000.00 - $11,428.00. When extending an offer of employment, the University of Southern California considers factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the candidate’s work experience, education/training, key skills, internal peer equity, federal, state and local laws, contractual stipulations, grant funding, as well as external market and organizational considerations.

Required Documents and Additional Information:

• Resume and cover letter required (may be uploaded as one file). Please do not submit your application without these documents.
• Part-time, fixed-term.
• Job openings are posted for a minimum of (5) five business days. This job may be removed from posting boards and filled any time after the minimum posting period has ended, so please apply on the same business day if interested.
• USC has excellent benefits, including health benefits for staff and their family with access to the renowned university medical network; eligibility for retirement plans with employer contributions after six months of employment; tuition benefits for staff and their family; free Professional Development classes; central Los Angeles location with easy access to commuter trains, buses and free tram pick up services; discounts to sporting and other campus events.

USC is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law or USC policy. USC observes affirmative action obligations consistent with state and federal law. USC will consider for employment all qualified applicants with criminal records in a manner consistent with applicable laws and regulations, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for employers and the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and with due consideration for patient and student safety. Please refer to the Background Screening Policy Appendix D for specific employment screen implications for the position for which you are applying. 

We provide reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities. Applicants with questions about access or requiring a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should contact USC Human Resources by phone at (213) 821-8100, or by email at [email protected]. Inquiries will be treated as confidential to the extent permitted by law.

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