Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform Services

Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform Services 

Location: This is a remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). All CB employees are required to occasionally travel to meet in person for business purposes. 

Type: This is a full-time position 

About the Team 

The Platform Services Team helps monitor and assure the health, security, and performance of the systems within a shared platform. The team owns a key piece of the platform shell, a shared foundation that domain teams across the organization build on to deliver a unified user experience. Team is responsible for designing, building, and deploying into the shell, integrating data and functionality from multiple domains into a single, cohesive entry point for users. It's a high-visibility role at the intersection of architecture, cross-domain collaboration, and platform reliability. 

About the Opportunity 

As a Lead Full Stack Engineer, you will set the technical direction for a cloud-native, AWS-based platform that integrates data and services from multiple domains into a cohesive, performant user experience. This role is expected to shape architecture and engineering standards across the platform, guide multiple engineers and squads toward a shared technical vision, and represent the platform's technical strategy in conversations with cross-functional and cross-domain stakeholders. 

You bring deep full-stack engineering expertise, with mastery across React front-end development and AWS-based backend/API architecture, and you have a track record of owning technical direction beyond a single feature or team, defining patterns and standards that other engineers and teams build on. You are comfortable making and defending architectural trade-offs at scale, and you actively drive alignment across teams rather than waiting for direction. 

You can lead technical design discussions across multiple teams, mentor and grow other engineers, and constructively challenge approaches that won't scale, while remaining hands-on in the code where it matters most. You understand cloud software delivery practices deeply, stay ahead of emerging tools and patterns, and can clearly communicate technical strategy and trade-offs to both engineers and senior stakeholders. 

In this role, you will: 

Technical Strategy & Solutioning (15%) 

• Develop and maintain deep understanding of the business processes and domains that the BAWP UI serves, and translate that understanding into platform-wide technical strategy 

• Own the evaluation of complex, cross-team feature requests, drive effort estimation and technical planning across squads, and identify dependencies and risks early 

• Define, document, and evolve architectural patterns and API contracts for integrating multiple domain services into the BAWP UI, ensuring consistency across teams 

• Lead peer code and design reviews across teams to ensure quality, consistency, and scalability, and establish review standards other engineers follow 

Design, Architecture & Implementation (50%) 

• Architect and build scalable, secure full-stack solutions using React (TypeScript) on the front end and AWS-native services on the backend 

• Design and implement APIs and data integration layers that aggregate content from multiple upstream domains, with robust handling of latency, partial failures, and caching 

• Design reusable, well-architected front-end components and shared modules within the shell shared across domains (micro-frontend/Module Federation or equivalent), setting the standard for other engineers to build against 

• Design and implement cloud-native architectures using AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB, Step Functions, SQS/SNS, ECS, CloudWatch) 

• Define and evolve architectural patterns, automation practices, and observability standards across the platform, and ensure adoption across teams 

• Ensure systems meet enterprise requirements for scalability, data integrity, security, availability, and reliability at a platform-wide level 

• Integrate monitoring, telemetry, and operational readiness into all platform components, and drive resolution of systemic reliability issues 

• Own and evolve automated end-to-end and UI testing strategy across the platform to ensure application quality and reliability 

• Drive performance optimization across API integration and rendering layers, and set performance benchmarks/standards for other teams 

Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence (25%) 

• Solve the most complex technical problems on the platform and drive improvements to overall system design 

• Mentor and grow other engineers, including senior engineers, on best practices in development, testing, system design, and technical decision-making 

• Evaluate and introduce new cloud, front-end, and test automation technologies where they add platform-wide value 

• Communicate technical strategy, trade-offs, and architectural decisions clearly to engineering leadership and business stakeholders 

• Champion and help establish best practices in secure system design, automation, performance, and resilient engineering across the organization 

Team Operations & Cross-Functional Collaboration (10%) 

• Partner with product, operations, security, and domain teams to shape aligned, well-integrated solutions at a platform-wide level 

• Lead platform readiness efforts through testing, monitoring, and reliability strategy 

• Drive documentation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement initiatives across teams 

• Collaborate with QA and engineering teams to embed automated testing into CI/CD pipelines 

• Foster a culture of ownership, documentation, accountability, and continuous improvement across the broader engineering organization 

About You 

You have: 

• 8+ years of experience designing, building, and supporting scalable, cloud-native full-stack applications 

• 5+ years of experience building modern front-end applications using TypeScript and React 

• Proven experience setting technical direction and standards across multiple teams or a platform, not just within a single team 

• Strong hands-on experience with backend technologies such as Node.js (preferably TypeScript), building APIs and data integration layers at scale 

• Deep experience with AWS services: Lambda, API Gateway, SNS, SQS, S3, Step Functions, EC2, ECS, VPC, IAM, CloudWatch, DynamoDB 

• Experience designing systems that integrate and aggregate data and content from multiple independent backend/domain services into a single UI 

• Strong knowledge of distributed cloud infrastructure and microservices architecture, with experience making trade-offs at an architectural level 

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (AWS CDK, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions, Backstage) 

• Experience building responsive, secure, high-performance UIs using React, TypeScript, HTML, and CSS 

• Familiarity with micro-frontend architectures (e.g., Module Federation) and shared shell/component patterns 

• Experience establishing automated testing frameworks and standards for end-to-end and UI testing, and integrating them into CI/CD pipelines 

• Diligent about peer code review, with particular rigor around reviewing AI-generated code for correctness, security, and maintainability before it is merged. 

• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers and influence technical direction without direct management authority 

• Strong focus on scalability, data integrity, reliability, and quality engineering practices 

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to present ideas in business-friendly language to senior stakeholders and lead cross-team technical discussions 

• Ability to prioritize and lead execution of complex, cross-team initiatives in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment 

Nice to Have: 

• Experience with LaunchDarkly. 

• Experience with monitoring/observability tools such as Grafana, CloudWatch dashboards 

• Familiarity with real-time stream processing (Apache Flink or similar) 

• Familiarity with ML/AI lifecycle concepts, and interest in AI-driven features (e.g., AI-generated insights) as part of the platform roadmap 

• Understanding of data isolation, performance segmentation, and secure access in distributed systems 

• Prior experience as a technical lead, staff engineer, or architect setting standards across multiple teams 

All roles at College Board require: 

• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work 

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer 

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively. 

• Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal 

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input. 

• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking. 

• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success. 

About Our Process 

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days. 

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise such as live coding, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks. 

What We Offer 

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck—we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We're a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market. 

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation 

• The hiring range for this role is $168,000–$183,000. 

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board. 

• We aim to make our best offer upfront rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data. 

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live. 

You'll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it's like to work at the College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more. 

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