Staff Software Engineer

Overview

Staff Software Engineer

Hybrid – Chennai, India

About The Role

This role focuses on Ally, a revolutionary product that makes digital course content more accessible. As the accessibility of digital course content becomes increasingly important worldwide, institutions must address long-standing and often overbearing challenges. Blackboard's Ally engineering team is responsible for developing industry-leading tools to improve accessibility through inclusivity, sustainability, and automation for all students. 

As a Staff Software Engineer on our team, you will design, develop, and maintain features of the Ally product. You’ll also communicate and partner cross-functionally with teams in product and software development. In this role, you will work on an ethical product, using Scala for the backend and JavaScript for the frontend. We run our applications in the AWS cloud and use Git for version control. You’ll work on a distributed team, collaborating with colleagues around the globe. You will serve as a technical leader for Ally, establishing engineering best practices, influencing architectural direction, and partnering with product, engineering, and senior stakeholders to solve its most complex and high-impact problems.

Required Skills And Experience

• 10-12 years of relevant experience
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, applying abstract thinking and rigorous judgment to complex systems.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and trade-offs clearly, influencing alignment across engineering, product, and leadership
• Familiarity with the full-cycle development process  
• Experience developing, building, testing, deploying, and operating applications  
• Experience working with cloud technologies   
• Awareness of how distributed systems work  
• Strong command of backend programming languages (Java, JavaScript, Python, etc.)  
• Familiarity with relational database design and querying concepts  
• Willingness to break things and make them work again  
• Knowledge of and experience with CI/CD principles and tools (Jenkins or Azure Pipelines)
• Fluency in written and spoken English
  
  

• Experience leading a team
• Experience working in a software product company delivering features for and maintaining a commercial software product
• Command line scripting knowledge in a Linux-like environment
• Knowledge of cloud computing (AWS)
• Experience with IntelliJ IDEA (or other IDE)
• Experience with a version control system (Git)
• Experience with a bug-tracking system (JIRA)
• Experience with a continuous integration system and continuous delivery practices
• Functional programming experience such as Haskell or Scala
• Experience with front-end development or interest in learning (Angular)
  
  

Blackboard advances teaching excellence and unlocks the full potential of technology to deliver meaningful outcomes. We empower institutions to deepen connections between educators and learners, inspire engagement, and drive long-term academic success across the full learner journey.  For more information, please visit www.blackboard.com.

This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.    

Blackboard is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, protected military/veteran status, or any other legally protected factor.