Senior Software Developer (Ruby)

If you're looking for the chance to learn, grow, and make a contribution to the community, look at employment opportunities with Full Sail University. You'll find your choice of career opportunities, great benefits, an environment that welcomes and values creativity, and a work experience that is both challenging and rewarding!

Join a collaborative engineering team improving education for thousands of students.

We're looking for a Senior Software Developer who wants more than just tickets to close. We want someone who thinks deeply about technical solutions, drives meaningful improvements, and takes ownership of their work. You'll have real influence in architectural and product decisions as we modernize our learning platform, tackling challenges in performance, scalability, and usability that affect thousands of students and instructors daily.

This isn't abstract product work. We are surrounded on campus by those who trust our platform for daily instruction, feedback, and collaboration. The features you build will help learners complete degrees, stay engaged, and succeed academically.

You'll work alongside a small but mighty team that values code quality, shares knowledge, and enjoys solving problems together. We believe the best software comes from teams where engineering voices matter, product vision is shared, and everyone is invested in both the craft and the mission.

If you care about elegant solutions, meaningful impact, and making education better then we'd love to talk.

The Senior Software Developer is responsible for independently designing, developing, and maintaining robust software applications that support Full Sail University’s business needs. They provide mentorship and technical leadership to more junior developers.

*** This position is located and worked on campus in Winter Park, Florida ***

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Design and Development

• Lead Software Development: Lead the design, development, and maintenance of complex software systems and applications.
• Architect, Write and Optimize Code: Define and implement coding standards and best practices, ensuring high-quality, scalable code. Write and optimize clean, efficient, and maintainable code, adhering to industry best practices.
• Design Complex Systems: Architect and design robust, scalable software solutions, making high-level decisions on technical direction.
• Explore and Adopt Improvements: Continuously explore and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and best practices to enhance the development process and maintain up-to-date technical knowledge
• Oversee Troubleshooting: Manage and resolve critical issues and complex bugs, guiding the team through troubleshooting processes.
• Collaborate Effectively: Work closely with cross-functional teams to gather requirements and deliver software solutions that meet project goals.
• Follow Security Best Practices: Ensure that applications appropriately control access to sensitive resources.
• Ensure System Performance: Identify and implement performance improvements to ensure optimal user experience and system efficiency

• Software Development Lifecycle

• Responsible for Documentation: Ensure comprehensive and high-quality documentation is created and maintained for complex systems and processes.
• Lead Code Reviews: Drive the code review process, providing in-depth feedback and ensuring adherence to best practices across the team.
• Define Testing Strategies: Establish and implement testing frameworks and strategies, overseeing comprehensive validation of software.
• Lead Agile Practices: Lead agile development processes, including sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives. Guide the team in sizing work for better planning.
• Strategic User Support: Provide high-level support and strategic guidance for resolving critical user issues.

• Growth

• Drive Continuous Improvement and Foster Innovation: Lead efforts to adopt and integrate new technologies and methodologies to improve development efficiency and software quality. Explore and implement innovative solutions to complex technical challenges.
• Mentor and Guide: Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, providing guidance on best practices, technical skills, and career development.

Other Responsibilities:

• Adheres to the policies and procedures of Full Sail University
• Maintains strict confidentiality of company and personnel information
• Demonstrates a strong commitment to the mission and values of the organization
• Adheres to company attendance standards
• Performs other duties as assigned

Supervisory Responsibilities:  No          

Competencies:

• Solid understanding of Ruby fundamentals, modern usage, and tooling. - Solid understanding of relational databases, SQL, and data modeling.
• Solid understanding of JavaScript fundamentals, modern usage, and tooling.
• Comfortable working across the web stack with modern front-end technologies as need arises.
• Comfortable utilizing MacOS/Linux command line tools.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills across technical and non-technical subjects
• Creative, methodical, and patient approach to troubleshooting
• Desire to continuously learn and refine skills, along with helping others to do the same
• Participatory approach to teamwork
• Excellent organizational and time-management skills

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a related field
• Minimum five (5) years relevant work experience in a related field
• 3+ years of Ruby experience in a professional production environment or in substantial personal projects for which the applicant can share source code.
• Professional experience developing highly interactive, medium to large scale web applications is highly beneficial.
• Experience integrating with third party APIs is helpful. - Experience working with educational technologies is helpful.
• Experience with the following technologies is beneficial: PostgreSQL, Rails, Sequel ORM, RSpec, Modern Java, NodeJS, ReactJS, Redis, AWS technologies (such as S3, RDS, EC2, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, etc.)

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations:  N/A

Computer/Equipment Skills: Please reference above.

Environmental Factors/Physical Demands:

Work is performed in an office environment. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to have the ability to maintain active customer and employee communication; access, input and retrieve information from the computer system; enter alpha-numeric data into a computerized system often while listening on the telephone.

Full Sail is an Equal Opportunity Employer.