Full-Stack Software Engineer

About Straia

Straia is developing an AI-first intelligence layer for colleges and universities. Many institutions rely on a patchwork of disconnected systems, which leaves staff spending countless hours combining data, preparing reports, and chasing down insights. Straia addresses this by bringing institutional data together and adding AI agents that can answer questions, produce insights and visualizations, and automate repetitive work so college operations become far more efficient.

Over time, the platform is designed to become the central intelligence layer for institutional operations, supporting areas such as student advising, admissions, budgeting, and resource planning with collaborative AI agents that understand each school’s data environment.

The company has recently closed a pre-seed round backed by a16z Speedrun, Reach Capital, and JFF Ventures, and is now looking for a Full Stack Engineer to help create the product institutions use every day to work with their data.

The Role

In this position, you will contribute across the complete product stack alongside the CTO and engineering team, working from the React frontend through the Node/TypeScript backend. You will help create the main product experience where institutional users interact with data and AI agents.

This is an opportunity to build a product from the ground up, shipping end-to-end features for a platform that handles institutional data at scale, runs privately hosted frontier models, and delivers fast insights to non-technical users making important decisions about student outcomes.

You will be trusted with substantial ownership from the beginning, including designing, building, and launching the interfaces and APIs that translate complex institutional data into clear, useful answers. The team works quickly, keeps the path from idea to production short, and gives engineers real responsibility for what they deliver.

The ideal candidate is highly self-directed and enjoys shipping. You should be comfortable taking an ambiguous problem, carrying it from concept to production, and refining the details that make a product genuinely pleasant to use. If you perform best in a high-expectation, fast-moving environment, this role will likely suit you well.

What You’ll Do

• Take responsibility for features across the full stack, moving them from design through launch and iteration using the React + Vite frontend and Node + Express + TypeScript backend.
• Create the user experience and APIs for non-technical users to ask questions and receive insights, visualizations, and automated workflows powered by AI agents.
• Integrate the product layer with the data stack, including Postgres and DuckDB, and with model inference while keeping query and inference latency low enough to feel instant.
• Independently scope, build, and deliver features with strong ownership, making practical decisions in uncertain situations and seeing work through end to end.
• Develop internal tools and automations that increase team leverage and reduce the manual work that slows engineering down.
• Build with reliability in mind, including observability, testing, and fault tolerance so systems are easy to understand, troubleshoot, and recover.

Who You Are

You are a full-stack engineer with several years of production experience and a strong instinct for shipping useful software. You move comfortably between frontend and backend work and enjoy owning the details that shape a great product experience.

You should be fluent with modern frontend development, have solid backend and API experience, be comfortable working with relational data, and be genuinely interested in bringing AI capabilities into a product. The team is especially interested in people who take initiative, communicate clearly, and care about mission-driven work that improves outcomes for students and institutions.

Our Stack

• Cloud infrastructure on GCP, managed with Pulumi
• Data layer built on Postgres and DuckDB
• LLM inference through a privately hosted frontier model on GCP, plus integrations with GPT, Gemini, and Claude
• Backend services written in Node.js, Express, and TypeScript
• Frontend built with React and Vite

Why Join Straia

• Join an early engineering team at a venture-backed AI company reshaping institutional intelligence in higher education.
• Work across the entire stack, from AI agent interfaces to the data systems and APIs beneath them, and see your work reach users quickly.
• Help build internal AI tools that make a small team dramatically more productive by automating repetitive engineering work.
• Collaborate directly with investors and advisors from a16z, Reach Capital, and JFF Ventures.
• Be part of a compact, fast-paced team that works intensely, ships quickly, and still values good food, laughter, and shared adventures.
• Create technology that meaningfully supports student success and equity across colleges nationwide.

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range for this role is $150K to $180K, along with equity. The position is based in San Francisco, with in-office work required four days per week. Benefits include platinum health insurance, dental coverage, and vision coverage.

Additional Information

This role is a 0 → 1 build opportunity, meaning you will help shape the product foundation rather than maintain an already mature system. The environment emphasizes speed, autonomy, and high ownership. The team uses privately hosted frontier models and works with institutional data at scale, so performance, reliability, and thoughtful engineering are central to the role.