Software Engineer (Early Career)

The Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI) is a non-partisan, non-profit dedicated to equipping the next generation of Americans with the skills to communicate and collaborate across lines of difference. We work with U.S. colleges and universities by providing co-curricular programming for students, professional development for faculty and staff, and strategic guidance to leadership. Our goal is to foster constructive dialogue at every level of the institution and to create the conditions for lasting organizational change. CDI was co-founded by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling author of The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation.

We're seeking an early-career Software Engineer to help build the technology behind CDI's learning programs. You'll work on Perspectives, our online learning platform, and our AI-powered dialogue practice experience, helping students build the skills to bridge divides and giving educators better tools to support their learning.

You'll work directly with and be mentored by our Senior Technical Lead, and collaborate closely with our Product team. You'll contribute to real product features, fix bugs, help keep our platform reliable, and improve the systems we use to build and maintain software. You'll start with clearly scoped work, get regular guidance and code review, and take on more responsibility, including production support, as your skills grow.

AI agents are part of our everyday engineering workflow. You'll learn to break problems into manageable pieces, evaluate implementation approaches, and review and test agent-generated code so you understand the work you ship. Our stack includes TypeScript, React, and Next.js; Java and Spring Boot; Python; and AWS. You don't need to arrive knowing all of it.

• Build and improve features for students, instructors, and CDI staff, such as learning activities, progress displays, and tools for managing courses and learners.

• Work with our Senior Technical Lead and Product team to break product needs into clear tasks, and deliver small, well-tested changes.

• Use AI coding agents to help implement features, investigate bugs, and explore unfamiliar code. Read, question, and test their output before treating it as finished.

• Diagnose problems by reproducing them, tracing application behavior, and using logs and tests to understand what went wrong.

• Write and maintain automated tests, check user-facing behavior, and participate in code reviews with attention to accessibility, reliability, and protecting learner data.

• Help monitor and support our production systems, building toward taking part in incident response.

• Contribute to the tools and practices that make AI-assisted development effective at CDI, including project context, custom agents and skills, tool integrations, and agent-assisted code review.

• Document what you learn, communicate progress and blockers, and ask for help early when something is unclear.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• At least one hands-on engineering project beyond coursework, such as an internship, co-op, job, freelance project, or sustained open-source contribution, where you worked in a shared codebase and had your code reviewed.

• A working foundation in at least one programming language, and a project you can explain: how it works, the decisions you made, and how you investigated problems.

• Understanding of web application basics, including how a user interface communicates with an API and how an application stores and retrieves data.

• Ability to read and modify code, work through problems step by step, and test your changes to make sure they work as expected.

• Thoughtful use of AI development tools: willingness to learn how to direct them, critically evaluate their output, and ask questions when something is unclear.

• Clear communication and follow-through, including responding constructively to feedback, flagging when you're blocked, and knowing when to ask for help.

• Motivation for CDI's mission and interest in building tools that help people learn and practice new skills.

• Experience building a web application with JavaScript or TypeScript and React, Next.js, or a similar framework, or exposure to Java, Spring Boot, or Python.

• Familiarity with automated testing or SQL.

• Interest in accessible design or education technology.