Associate Software Engineer

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame is disrupting the workforce development industry, leveraging an AI-powered marketplace of more than 50,000 skills courses, complemented by assessments, content authoring, curation, personalized learning pathways, and virtual coaching. eLearning is delivered seamlessly through existing enterprise systems and in the flow of work. More than 2,000 companies, including 150+ of the Global2000, rely on OpenSesame to develop the world's most productive and admired workforces.

Learn more: www.opensesame.com/about

About the Team

The Core engineering team is a platform enablement team responsible for OpenSesame's identity management and commerce domains. We build and maintain shared services that support product engineering teams across the company.

We operate in an agile, continuously improving, automation-oriented environment. We regularly inspect how we work, identify what's slowing us down, and make deliberate changes to improve quality, reliability, and delivery.

About the Job

You will work, with mentorship, across a modern full tech stack including React, TypeScript, Node.js,, GitHub Actions, Terraform, AWS, SQL (RDBMS), and identity management protocols such as SAML and OIDC. Front-end expertise and exposure to authentication flows is a plus. You will also work in and around legacy systems and are expected to approach complex systems with curiosity and care.

You are expected to participate in team practices such as pairing, code reviews, on-call rotation, and releases with increasing level of ownership as you steadily expand your knowledge and skills.

This role is ideal for someone who is growing their professional experience and excited to develop technical skills while contributing to a strong team culture.

Performance Objectives

In your first 3 months

Summary: Get fully set up and integrated into the team's codebases and workflows; start participating in collaborative development.

• Basic System Understanding: Develop a basic mental model of the Core team's domains, including identity management and legacy commerce platform.

• Team Collaboration: Build working relationships through pairing. Participate actively in standups, planning and estimation, retrospectives, and other required team meetings.

• Code Contributions: Enhance your technical skills by writing code and debugging errors with guidance from peers.

• Development Practices: Apply standard testing approaches, writing unit tests and smoke tests. Start learning our CI/CD pipeline technologies, such as Github Actions and Terraform.

Within 6 months

Summary: Begin taking on ownership of specific operational responsibilities, deepen your understanding of the team's codebase and testing practices, and grow your confidence in delivering and supporting production code.

• Increased Systems Understanding: Understand the high-level relationships between key components and dependencies of identity management and legacy systems.

• Release Experience: Pair with a teammate as release captain for a legacy system deployment. Learn how to triage issues based on the mental model of the system that you are developing.

• Development Practices: Contribute to planning sessions with senior engineers to break down complex work into smaller, end-to-end user stories. Execute well-defined user stories or technical tasks from design through deployment, validating with senior engineers to ensure adherence to the required quality standards and practices.

• Operational Readiness: Participate in the on-call rotation. Investigate and triage issues using logs and observability tools, escalating when appropriate.

• Technical Judgment: Apply unhappy-path thinking, defensive programming, and performance awareness. Learn and apply tradeoffs with guidance from senior engineers.

By the end of your first year

Summary: You are comfortable working across much of the team's codebase and are beginning to develop deeper expertise in a specific area. You take initiative on small projects, contribute to improving team processes with increasing confidence.

• Codebase Confidence: Troubleshoot and contribute to many parts of the team's codebase. Begin to develop recognized expertise in a specific system, becoming a go-to contributor.

• Quality: Take responsibility for code quality and maintainability. Leave systems better than you found them.

• Team Collaboration & Communication: Embrace collective ownership of code, documentation and outcomes, taking pride in shared success and supporting improvements to code written by others. Communicate clearly and respectfully in team discussions, practicing active listening, defending a contrary stance constructively, and building on others' ideas to foster a culture of collaboration.

• Growth: Proactively identify opportunities to improve your skills, seek feedback from your team and your manager. Foster a culture of continuous improvement for yourself whilst making meaningful contributions to the team.

What Success Looks Like

• Core services you work on are reliable, well-tested, and maintainable.

• You contribute positively to team culture through collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.

• You are clearly on a growth trajectory toward Software Engineer by developing the required skills.

Location: This position can be based anywhere in the US. We operate as a remote-first company and invest in all-company in-person meetings several times a year.

Performance Driven: We're looking for self-starters with a track record of delivering excellent results, but we're highly selective about who we hire. We don't focus on typical job requirements; instead, we're interested in specific examples from your past experiences. All positions can be based anywhere in the US, and require up to 15 days of travel per year, with senior management and leadership teams requiring up to 35 days.

Compensation: The annual salary for this role is $98,800, depending on experience. At OpenSesame, we offer a comprehensive benefits package to employees upon hire, including professional development, ISOs, health insurance, 401(k) matching, and paid time off. We carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors, relying on market data to determine compensation and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience. We prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals.

Equal Employment Opportunity: OpenSesame is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer that values and welcomes diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of various legally protected characteristics, including criminal history, and strive to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. We prioritize safety and security and may use your information accordingly, and you can contact us for assistance or accommodations during the job application process.

Pay Transparency: At OpenSesame, we prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals. We provide competitive and fair compensation to our employees based on their skills, experience, and performance.

CPRA (California Candidates): When you submit your application, OpenSesame may collect and use your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy and the CPRA. This may include personal details and employment history, and will only be used for employment-related purposes. We may share this information with third-party service providers, but we will not sell it to third parties. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us, and for more information on your rights under the CPRA, refer to our privacy policy or the California Attorney General's website.

We Care About Your Security: We've been made aware of a phishing scam involving individuals impersonating OpenSesame recruiters. All legitimate communication from our team will come from @opensesame.com email addresses. If you receive a suspicious message, please contact us directly at careers@opensesame.com. Your security matters to us — thank you for staying vigilant