Lead Software Engineer

About Summer

Summer is a Certified B Corp with a mission to maximize savings for the 46 million Americans burdened by student debt. Summer combines policy expertise with innovative tech to help borrowers simplify college cost planning and student loan repayment, generating $278/month in savings per person and $1.8B in savings for our users to date. Summer has raised $30 million to date from world-class investors, including QED Investors, General Catalyst, Greycroft, Rebalance Capital, SemperVirens, Foundation Capital, Story Ventures, NextView, Flourish Ventures, and the Financial Health Network. We’ve partnered with dozens of clients who pay for Summer to assist their employees and customers, including the city government of Alexandria, Virginia, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Diabetes Association, Asurion, the City of New York, ADP and more.

Job Summary

We could spend paragraphs talking about coding requirements, algorithms, and data structures—but you’ve already mastered those. This role is different. As a full-stack Lead Software Engineer at Summer, you’ll manage and mentor a small pod of engineers while remaining hands-on in the codebase. You’ll guide the team through technical design, planning, and delivery of major product initiatives. This isn’t just about shipping features, it’s about setting direction, building strong systems and people, and ensuring your pod delivers high-quality, scalable software that makes a real-world impact. This is an opportunity to grow your leadership skills, contribute to Summer’s technical vision, and build a mission-driven engineering culture that values ownership, quality, and empathy.

Key Responsibilities

• Mentor and manage a team of engineers through thoughtful technical leadership and day-to-day support.
• Review and assess completed work in collaboration with fellow engineering leads to uphold a high bar for quality.
• Clarify complex requirements and help design sustainable, long-term solutions that are maintainable and scalable.
• Lead by example: stay hands-on in the codebase, supporting your team as they build and ship great products.
• Drive product planning, ensuring we commit to initiatives that are realistic, high-impact, and delivered at a high standard.
• Oversee the design, implementation, and maintenance of internal tools and systems to streamline engineering workflows across the organization.
• Collaborate closely with the Head of Engineering, your product management lead, and product design partner to ensure your pod’s work aligns with our values, vision, and long-term goals with a focus on prioritization, double bottom-line impact, and thoughtfully designed experiences.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience building and maintaining production-grade web applications.
• 2+ years of experience leading engineers or owning technical direction for a small or mid-sized team.
• A proven ability to design, build, and maintain scalable software solutions.