Product Engineer, Tech Lead

Product Engineer, Tech Lead
Location: Boston, MA (Hybrid — 2 days per week in office)

About Us

Clasp is a venture-backed, mission-driven startup transforming access to education and career pathways. We are revolutionizing the way employers attract and retain critical talent, while simultaneously tackling the student debt crisis. (Yep, we think BIG.) Our innovative platform meaningfully connects employers, educational institutions, and diverse talent to drive mutual benefit—using accessible education financing as the thread. We like to think of ourselves as more than a fintech; we’re a catalyst for economic mobility.

A Forbes Fintech 50 company, portfolio company of SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management — the largest HR organization out there!) and recipient of “Startup of the Year” by StartUp Boston, Clasp is driven by our commitment to social impact and innovation. We are reshaping the future of the workforce one opportunity at a time. Join us on our journey to give power to learners and unlock fulfilling careers that drive positive change in their communities and beyond.

The Role – Product Engineer, Tech Lead

We are seeking a Tech Lead to partner with our existing technical leadership to mobilize our engineering team as we scale our product to help tens of thousands more students and partner with dozens more alternative education partners, financing hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and other financial products. The ideal candidate is exceptionally strong at decomposing challenging problems, fluent in Javascript/Typescript, and opinionated about UX & APIs, but is also passionate about growing people around them and instilling in others best practices.

At Clasp we run a DevOps culture where the engineers have full ownership of the code they write & the infrastructure on which it runs. Candidates should be enthused about making substantial contributions to the architecture driving the product roadmap and the Clasp business, and achieving tremendous personal growth with us along the way!

Key Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and maintain a robust application management and loan repayment platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and maintainability across front-end and back-end systems

• Leverage full-stack engineering skills to contribute alongside team and build a polished & accessible end-user experience that tens of thousands of students and program administrators love, and develop best of breed API on reliable infrastructure for our partners to leverage

• Set best practices for code quality, system design, and security while mentoring engineers and conducting code reviews

• Oversee 2-3 engineers’ day-to-day operations with the support of the Director of Engineering

• Work with cross-functional stakeholders to define and prioritize work, break down large initiatives into achievable milestones, and balance technical debt with new feature development

• Spec out stories with the engineering team and product leadership, and lead the team in continually reflecting on how to better deliver value and operate as a team

• Foster a strong engineering culture through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.

• Participate in future on-call rotations and ensure by building self-healing and resilient systems and leveraging infrastructure as code and monitoring tools that our systems are highly available
  

Who You Are

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent bootcamp or upskilling program experience

• Hands-on experience managing CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, or similar) and ownership of deployment strategies, release management, and production monitoring

• Experience working closely with Product teams to define technical requirements and Compliance teams to ensure regulatory adherence in financial services or similarly regulated environments.

• Ability to clearly articulate technical trade-offs, align stakeholders, and make informed decisions under ambiguity.

• 4+ years working in a SaaS startup regularly building and owning the complete E2E technology stack for Web Application (Frontend + Backend + Cloud + CI/CD)

• Deep experience with a combination of the following technologies:

• Javascript & TypeScript (React, NextJS, Recoil (other state management libraries)), Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI, etc.), HTML, CSS

• Databases: SQL (we use PostgreSQL)

• Cloud: AWS or Google Cloud experience

• Design: We use Figma; understanding of responsive design

• DevOps: Experience with CI/CD and modern cloud and container tooling
  

Why This Role Is Compelling

• Modern tech stack with the ability to have impact to many different user personas - recruiters, students and more

• High autonomy working in a highly collaborative team

• Can grow into a more formal people management role – expectation though is to be very hands on

• Step into being a 10x engineer and ride the AI wave with a team doubling down on how this technology allows us to focus on harder problems and solve for our customer’s needs without compromising on quality
  
  

Compensation

The salary range for this position is competitive and will be commensurate with the candidate's experience, qualifications, and industry knowledge, ranging between $155,000 to $190,000 annually. In addition to the base salary, we offer an attractive equity component as part of our compensation package, providing an opportunity for eligible employees to share in the success and growth of our company. We are committed to offering competitive compensation and benefits packages to attract and retain top talent.

Closing

If you are a highly driven individual with a passion for technology, and you thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced environment, we want to hear from you! Join us in revolutionizing the workforce solution industry and making a meaningful impact on businesses worldwide. Apply now to be a part of our growing team!

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where all employees feel valued, respected, and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives and talents. Clasp is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. We embrace diversity and are dedicated to providing equal employment opportunities to all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.