Software Developer

How to Apply

A cover letter and resume are important submissions for the hiring team to get a sense of your experience. In the cover letter, in two pages or less, please let us know how this role aligns with your career aspirations and skill set. Submit both a cover letter and resume as one file (because of system limitations).

Who We Are

About the Center for Academic Innovation

Through curricular innovation, tools for student success, and educational research and analytics, the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation is building the future of education. Our vision is a future in which education connects and empowers learners everywhere to reach their full potential throughout their lives. To realize our vision, we make it our mission to collaborate across campus and around the world to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for learners everywhere.

About the Michigan Online Product Engineering Team

The Michigan Online Product Engineering team is a newly formed, dynamic group of developers, designers, testers, and product specialists at the heart of the Center for Academic Innovation. Our mission is to design, build, and scale the Michigan Online platform to serve 25 million learners worldwide. Organized into squads focused on Learner Innovation and Platform, we are responsible for the entire product lifecycle. We are a collaborative, agile team dedicated to creating a world-class, data-driven, and personalized destination for online education. For more information, please visit our website: Academic Innovation.

Responsibilities*

• Partner in rapid product discovery through user research, prototyping, and experimentation to validate solutions that are feasible, usable, and valuable
• Write production-quality code in Python/Django and JavaScript/React/Vue while owning critical platform components (authentication, APIs, UI, data pipelines, LMS integrations, payment integrations)
• Design and deploy scalable solutions that achieve measurable outcomes for millions of learners
• Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to research, explore, and evaluate opportunities for leveraging artificial intelligence in internal- and learner-facing products
• Apply technical standards and architectural patterns that enable rapid experimentation and continuous delivery
• Troubleshoot production issues when they impact learner outcomes
• Support cross-functional squads with primary focus on learner-facing experiences and innovative learning technologies
• Actively participate in code reviews, emphasizing best practices for software engineering
• Evaluate emerging technologies and prototype solutions that unlock new possibilities for learners
• Build strong relationships across CAI and university partners based on trust and shared commitment to outcomes

What You’ll Do

The Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan is seeking a qualified Software Developer to join our Product Engineering team and contribute to the Michigan Online platform serving millions of global learners. This is a hands-on role where you will develop new functionality and support the existing platform while ensuring engineering practices scale to meet ambitious growth goals. You will participate in the design and delivery of learner-facing experiences such as cohort tools, LMS integrations, and innovative learning technologies, taking ownership of outcomes rather than just code delivery. Working across our squad-based organization, you will collaborate closely with user experience designers, infrastructure engineers, product owners, and other stakeholders to deliver exceptional experiences to learners around the world. This position will report to the Director of Product Engineering.

Required Qualifications*

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
• 1-3 years of professional software engineering experience
• Enterprise development and production experience working with Python and the Django/Flask framework
• Production experience building and maintaining web applications at scale
• Full-stack development skills including:
  • Backend: REST APIs, microservices, database design
  • Frontend: Modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Vue.js, or Angular)
  • HTML5/CSS and responsive design principles
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL,…