Job Title: Founding Full-Stack Software Engineer

Company Name: Hilight

Job Url: https://wellfound.com/jobs/3826609-founding-full-stack-software-engineer

Job Description: 
Hilight
Actively Hiring
A district-wide recognition tool for teachers and staff to build school culture
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Founding Full-Stack Software Engineer
$90k – $150k • 0.5% – 1.0%
|
Remote (
United States
)
|3 years of exp
|Full Time
Posted: yesterday• Recruiter recently active
Hires remotely in
United States
Remote Work Policy
Remote only

Visa Sponsorship
Not Available

Preferred Timezones
Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Central Time, Eastern Time, Atlantic Time
Relocation
Allowed
Skills
Node.js
PostgreSQL
Express.js
TypeScript
React.js
About the job
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:

Has enough experience to work independently, but is still excited to learn, grow, and build in a fast-moving startup
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.