Principal Software Engineer

Binti builds modern software to help every child have a safe, loving, and stable family. Working with county and state governments across 36 states, Binti's tools improve the child welfare system. The 500+ agencies using Binti serve about 42% of children in child welfare in the US, and agencies using Binti have increased the number of approved families by an average of 30%, making a real dent in the shortage of foster/adoptive parents for children in the US. Beyond helping families foster/adopt children, Binti is launching software to support families who are struggling to get the services they need to stay together with or reunify with their children.

Binti is a for-profit, mission-driven software company based in Oakland, CA. Investors include Founders Fund, First Round Capital, Kapor Capital, and others. We’re a team of 90+ people and growing quickly. We care about creating a workplace where everyone feels welcome and can bring their full self to work. We have a huge, ambitious vision to rewire government to be more effective in expanding opportunities for people around the world, and we are looking for mission-driven, high-empathy, high-performance, and low-ego team members to join us on our exciting journey towards that vision.

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

We're looking for collaborative, detail-oriented engineers who love to challenge themselves and their teams to build high performing solutions that enable better outcomes for our customers.  As Principal Engineer, reporting to a Senior Engineering Manager, you'll have the opportunity to take significant ownership of technical projects that will drive the success of the overall business. Strong candidates bring deep product and technical acumen, combined with the ability to move fast.

LOCATION

Binti is headquartered in Oakland, California.  Much of our engineering team is local to the San Francisco Bay Area and works via a hybrid setup –  in-person from the office some days and remote otherwise.  Our team members outside of the Bay Area travel quarterly to join us for department in-person meetings for collaboration and connectivity. 

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Lead architecture discussions during feature development to ensure that projects are built in a sound, reliable, performant way

• Improve user experiences that software engineers and engineering teams depend on during their day-to-day workflow

• Mentoring other engineers on best practices for software engineering

• Optimizing the performance of components for both latency and throughput

• Monitoring all of the above in a scalable way

• Guiding incident response and vulnerability remediation efforts

• Collaborate with Product Management to scope and execute product features while maintaining Binti’s values.

• Focus on the longevity of the codebase - notice and advocate for patterns that allow code to be flexible, scalable, and approachable to other engineers

• Help our team move quickly and learn while maintaining a welcoming and supportive culture

• Push our product so it continues to be a beautiful, yet intuitive and accessible interface for users from all walks of life

• Champion security and privacy, including looking for ways to make it easier to safeguard HIPAA compliance for sensitive data and incorporate security best practices

SAMPLE PROJECTS

• Spearhead development of new product areas like child intake and community crisis response

• Evolve configurable platform features like scheduling or application requirements into a reusable, performant layer that works for different workflows across the country

• Architect engineering design for storing of configurable relationships between humans, beyond biological relationships

• Transfer applications between agencies, accounting for variable workflow setups and agency configured permissions

WHO YOU ARE

• At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience

• Experience leading and coordinating large infrastructural and  architectural projects and rollouts

• Comfort with a startup mindset, taking initiative, and comfort with MVP

• Knowledge and ability to effectively project manage

• Experience mentoring team members

• Ability to architect, build and maintain configurable systems that unlock better workflows in foster care

• Can collaborate with cross-functional partners in product, technical account management, policy, and more

• Demonstrated ability to work across engineering teams on projects that elevate not just our own systems and designs, but those of other teams as well

• Passion for delivering products end-to-end, from ideation through planning and scoping to implementation

• Excitement to jump into our Ruby on Rails and React architecture and write foundational and expansive features. Prior experience with product development on a web application strongly favored. Ruby, Rails, React or GraphQL experience is a plus. 

• Experience with configurable enterprise software, or better yet government-facing software is a strong positive.

WHAT WE LOVE ABOUT YOU

• A self-motivated, independent engineer who enjoys owning projects from inception to completion

• Solid programming foundations and experience with or motivation to learn the full stack

• End-to-end experience building, shipping, and maintaining products

• Having a growth mindset, having a sense of urgency, and being comfortable with challenging the status quo

• Excited to level up themselves and bring everyone else along for the ride

• Track record of breaking through walls on your way to success

• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills

• Ruby skills/experience on lock, Rails, React, and/or GraphQL experience a plus

• Gen AI interest, curiosity, experience and excellent judgment also a plus

BENEFITS & PERKS

• An above-market compensation package (salary + equity)

• Excellent medical, dental, vision, and life insurance - 99% of insurance premiums covered for you + your dependents

• Flexible vacation time to promote a healthy work-life blend

• 13 paid holidays; 11 federally observed holidays (including Juneteenth), plus Election Day and the day after Thanksgiving

• 16 weeks of paid parental bonding leave for the arrival of a newborn or newly placed infant

• Sick/mental health time separate from vacation days (accrue up to a cap of 160 hours)

• 4 weeks of sabbatical after 4 years of service at the company

• 401k, Commuter benefits, FSA, and DCSA with administration paid for

• $5,000 annual bonus for employees who volunteer as a CASA (court-appointed special advocates)

• $2,500 annual reimbursement for ongoing learning and development, with opportunities to attend trainings/conferences, on-site speaker series, and lunch and learns

• $300 reimbursement for virtual home office setup

• $50 a month remote work stipend to cover internet, electricity, home office setup costs or lunch/snacks with coworkers

• Paid jury duty

At Binti, we celebrate having a diverse team and believe our differences make us stronger. Binti is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace and is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome all qualified applicants to apply without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status.