About Hilight
Hilight is building tools that help school communities recognize, celebrate, and support educators in meaningful ways. Our platform is used by school districts to highlight great work, strengthen culture, and improve retention one moment of recognition at a time.
We’re a small, mission-driven startup (currently a team of 5) working at the intersection of education, culture, and technology. Our product is already live and in use in school districts across 15 states, and we’re entering a new phase of growth as we expand our product offerings, improve our mobile experience, and onboard more school districts.
This is our first engineering hire, and you’ll work directly with our CTO & co-founder, Krissy, to shape both the product and the engineering foundation of the company.
The Role
We’re looking for a full-stack engineer who’s excited to take real ownership in a startup environment. You’ll work across the entire application (backend to frontend) and have a meaningful voice in technical and product decisions.
This role is ideal for someone who:
- Is comfortable taking ownership of meaningful parts of the product, from design through implementation
- Enjoys autonomy and responsibility
- Wants to build something that has real impact in schools and communities
- Is excited to grow into a technical leader as the company grows
You’ll be one of the core builders of Hilight.
What You’ll Work On
- Building and maintaining our full-stack web application
- (Postgres, Express, Node.js, React, TypeScript)
- Helping evolve our mobile app experience by wrapping our existing web app for iOS using Capacitor
- Improving mobile usability, performance, and platform-specific behavior within a web-based architecture
- Designing and implementing new product features end-to-end
- Improving system reliability, performance, and developer experience
- Collaborating closely on product direction, not just implementation
- Supporting district onboarding from a technical perspective
- Helping define engineering best practices as we scale
- Using modern AI-powered developer tools to work efficiently and thoughtfully
Our Tech Stack
- Frontend: React, TypeScript
- Backend: Node.js, Express, TypeScript
- Database: PostgreSQL
- Mobile:Progressive Web App (PWA) wrapped for the App Store using Capacitor
- Shared React + TypeScript codebase (no native mobile frameworks required)
You don’t need to be an expert in everything, but you should be comfortable working across the stack and learning quickly.
What We’re Looking For
Required
- 3–6+ years of experience as a software engineer (or equivalent experience)
- Strong experience with JavaScript/TypeScript
- Experience building full-stack web applications
- Comfort working independently and managing your own priorities
- Thoughtful about code quality, tradeoffs, and long-term maintainability
- Clear communicator who enjoys collaboration in a small team
- Excited by early-stage startup environments
Nice to Have
- Experience with React and Node.js in production
- Comfort thinking about mobile UX and constraints (even within a web-based app)
- Experience onboarding customers or supporting real users
- Background in education (former teacher, ed-tech, district work, etc.)
- Prior startup experience or being “first/early engineer”
Why This Role Is Special
- You’ll be the first engineer hired at Hilight
- You’ll have real ownership over architecture, tooling, and technical direction
- You’ll work directly with the CTO & co-founder every day
- You’ll help shape a product used by real educators in real schools
- You’ll receive equity and grow with the company
- You’ll help define what engineering looks like at Hilight as we scale
This is a hands-on, high-trust role with significant influence.
Compensation & Benefits
We believe in transparency and flexibility.
- Salary range: $90,000 – $150,000 USD, depending on experience and level
- Equity: Meaningful early-stage equity package
- Location: Remote (US-based); Boston area is a plus but not required
- Benefits: PTO and flexible work schedule
- Flexible work environment with trust and autonomy
How We Work
- Small team, low ego, high trust
- Pragmatic, not process-heavy
- Thoughtful use of modern AI tools to improve developer productivity
- Strong collaboration between engineering, product, and leadership
- Deep respect for educators and the communities we serve
