Software Engineer, Staff

Blackboard is a leading EdTech company and SaaS provider that delivers digital environments for transformational teaching and learning. The Staff Software Engineer will build and own a consumer product focused on verifying the authenticity of thinking and learning, with responsibilities spanning user-facing interfaces, secure communications, encryption, data architecture, access controls, quality, and end-to-end feature delivery.

Responsibilities:

• User-facing product interfaces: the core user experience that learners interact with daily
• Secure communications layer: between components of our product server-side, in browser, and client side
• Encryption of sensitive data: ensuring privacy and security of data for and from users
• Storage architecture and schema design for persistent user state — built to evolve as the product grows, with you determining the technical approach as new capabilities are added
• Data access controls and audit logging that satisfy institutional security and compliance requirements, weighing trade-offs across a range of technical and business factors
• End-to-end feature ownership from spec to production — including testing, monitoring, and iteration
• Active use of AI-assisted development tooling to maintain high output without sacrificing code quality
• Contribution to, and growing ownership of, shared component libraries and codebase standards as the team grows
• Stay on the bleeding edge of circumvention tools, best practices, and industry competitors, contributing your findings to help the team maintain its edge

Requirements:

• Master's degree in computer science or related field with a minimum of 6 years of relevant experience
• You work natively with AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent) — not as a curiosity, but as your actual development workflow
• You've shipped products to real users — full-stack, with real accountability for whether they work
• Strong product instincts: you notice when something feels off in the user experience and you fix it, even if it wasn't in your ticket
• You can move fast, make good decisions under ambiguity, and leave the codebase better than you found it
• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the country where the role is based at the time of hire and must maintain that authorization for the duration of employment. The company does not provide visa sponsorship or immigration support for this position
• PhD in computer science or related field
• Maximum curiosity to understand the workings and dynamics of technologies and human interactions with them
• Understanding of consumer facing tools, usability requirements, and quality assurance practices
• Demonstrated ability to dissect how tools work, exploits are closed, and loop holes eliminated
• Background in consumer-facing products where user behavior and engagement genuinely matter, and where integrity of the product is of the utmost importance
• Willingness, desire, and drive to get to the root issue and solve it, to leave any matter better than you found it