Founding Engineer
About SBNC
The Student Basic Needs Coalition (SBNC) is a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring college students have the financial resources they need to get from enrollment to graduation. We work at the intersection of technology, student leadership, and policy to connect students to public benefits like SNAP and Medicaid and to reduce the administrative burden that keeps millions of eligible students from accessing support.
Since 2020, SBNC has partnered with over 100 campuses and helped tens of thousands of students access hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits. Our work is grounded in lived experience, driven by data, and focused on building scalable infrastructure for student success.
About Navvy
Navvy is SBNC’s AI-supported benefits access platform. It screens students for eligibility using a short questionnaire or FAFSA data, generates a personalized roadmap, supports document upload and verification, guides students through application workflows, and uses SMS and chatbot nudges to drive completion.
Navvy is already live and used by 50,000+ students representing over 500 campuses — but we are still early in our technical maturity. Much of the system has been built with external contractors. Our next phase is about bringing core infrastructure in-house, improving reliability and architecture, dramatically reducing per-student costs, and building toward a platform that can continue to scale nationally across states and institutions.
Our founding engineer will own the production product, keep users happy, and build the next big step up of the platform.
About the Role
We are seeking a Founding Engineer who will serve as a technical partner to the Executive Director and play a central role in shaping the architecture, roadmap, and long-term viability of Navvy.
This is not a typical engineering role where product direction is handed down. You will be deeply involved in:
- Solving complex social problems by translating difficult workflows into technical systems
- Helping prioritize what to build (and what not to build)
- Designing for impact, cost-efficiency, and scalability
- Making architectural decisions that will define the platform for years
- Working across technical, research, and operational functions to ensure the product reflects real-world needs
The right person is motivated less by novelty and more by the challenge of building something that works — reliably, affordably, and at scale — for populations that are often overlooked by technology.
What You’ll Do
- Own technical architecture and implementation of Navvy alongside external contractors and future hires
- Audit the existing codebase and systems, identifying risks, gaps, and opportunities for simplification
- Manage and collaborate with external technical vendors, including scoping work, reviewing deliverables, and ensuring quality and alignment with long-term architecture
- Lead technical onboarding for new campus partners, including supporting integrations, troubleshooting data flows, and ensuring implementations work in real-world institutional environments
- Design and build core infrastructure in areas such as:
- API-based workflows
- Data models and state-specific logic
- Document upload and handling
- Form mapping and validation
- Secure data pipelines
- Integrations with external systems
- Partner closely with the Executive Director (a highly engaged non-technical founder) on product strategy, tradeoffs, sequencing, and feasibility
- Work closely with the Data & Evaluation Manager to translate product research, user insights, and evaluation findings into technical decisions and roadmap priorities
- Make pragmatic decisions balancing speed, cost, and correctness
- Establish engineering norms: documentation, testing practices, deployment workflows, technical roadmap
- Help define future technical hiring needs as the organization grows
Who We are Looking For
You might be a strong fit if you:
- Have 6–10+ years of experience as a fullstack engineer or senior software engineer
- Have worked in EdTech, GovTech, civic tech, healthcare, or other complex regulated domains
- Have built and owned infrastructure to power fullstack applications - cloud architecture, service architecture, APIs, and databases
- Have experience designing systems where correctness, security, and user trust matter
- Enjoy working in ambiguous environments and shaping problems, not just executing tickets
- Have experience working cross-functionally with non-technical stakeholders (e.g., research, operations, policy, program teams) and translating messy real-world needs into technical systems
- Care deeply about the mission of increasing access to education and economic stability
- Are energized by partnering closely with a founder and having real ownership
This role is likely not a fit if you:
- Prefer highly structured environments with large existing teams
- Want narrowly scoped tickets rather than open-ended problem solving
- Are primarily motivated by working on consumer-scale growth products rather than social impact applications
- Are uncomfortable working with legacy systems or imperfect codebases
Current Technical Stack
Our current system is built on a mix of modern web technologies and third‑party services. While the exact stack may evolve, experience with the following is especially relevant:
- React frontend
- Python backend/API
- Integrations with many external APIs and services, especially in higher education or government contexts
- Cloud infrastructure (AWS or similar)
- Working with data models, authentication, and secure data flows
- Security-conscious design (PII, FERPA considerations; SOC 2–oriented practices)
More important than exact stack alignment is your ability to reason about systems and adapt quickly.
Compensation & Logistics
- Salary: $125,000
- Full-time, remote within the United States
- Travel 2-3 times per year for conferences and team meetings
- Competitive benefits package and flexible work culture
- 5 weeks of company wide closures + flexible PTO
Why This Role Matters
If we get this right, Navvy could become national infrastructure for connecting students to public benefits — reducing administrative burden, increasing college completion, and shifting life outcomes for millions of people.
This is a rare opportunity to build foundational technology in a space that deeply matters, with real-world complexity, real users, and real consequences.
If that excites you, we’d love to talk.
