About CDI
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. Since its founding in 2017, CDI has partnered with more than 150 colleges and universities nationwide, offering an evidence-based suite of programs designed to reach stakeholders at every level of a campus—from presidents to incoming students—to create campus cultures of inquiry and dialogue. CDI was co-founded by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling author of The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation.
About the Role
CDI is seeking a hands-on Lead Full-Stack Engineer to be our first in-house engineering hire and technical owner of our learning platform.
You’ll set technical direction and make key architecture decisions while staying deep in the code—leading implementations, resolving production issues, and turning research and product priorities into shipped software. You’ll report to the VP of Product and partner closely with the Associate Product Manager.
A core part of the role is bringing platform ownership in-house: transitioning work from our external agency and helping build the engineering function as we scale (fully in-house or a hybrid vendor + internal model).
You’ll work with Product, Research, and Implementation to translate CDI’s evidence-based curricula into reliable, scalable digital experiences—and to prototype new learning approaches, including AI-enabled dialogue practice. This is a highly visible, mission-driven role with meaningful influence on CDI’s technical foundation and product culture.
Responsibilities
Within your first six months, partner with Product to improve platform reliability and reduce support load by addressing peak-usage bottlenecks and reworking enrollment, authentication, rostering, and licensing infrastructure.
Own end-to-end system architecture and technical roadmap for CDI’s product suite: application, data flows, integrations, and infrastructure.
Contribute hands-on to front-end and back-end code to unblock delivery, lead critical implementations, and resolve production issues.
Drive and operate CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability/monitoring, and alerting.
Establish and cultivate engineering best practices (code review, branching, documentation, security)—providing technical oversight of our agency partner and mentoring incoming junior engineers as the team scales.
Partner closely with Product, Research, and Implementation to translate CDI’s evidence-based curricula into scalable, usable digital experiences.
Ensure secure and privacy-conscious handling of user and institutional data; work with Product and Operations to align on compliance and data policies.
Communicate technical choices and tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
