Senior Software Engineer (Developer Experience)

Developer Experience owns the systems every engineer at Instructure touches: build and CI, source control and migration, deployment paths, and the data that tells teams who owns what and what's safe to ship. We build mechanisms, not reports. Our team tenets require us to exhaust reuse before we build anything new, and this role's scope is written that way on purpose.

About the role.

You'll own two connected workstreams. Both have designs and stakeholders today, and neither is staffed to build.

1. Build the AI SDLC pipeline.

Stand up automated review across the pull request life cycle: risk-based triage that decides how much scrutiny a change needs, a security review pass backed by Instructure's global security tenets, a quality review pass, and an architecture review pass, tied together with Slack integration for triage. You'll build this on top of internal tools already in production.

2. Embed architecture, security, and quality gates across the SDLC.

Extend the security deployment gate proven on one deploy surface to the other three, so no path to production can ship a known critical vulnerability regardless of which pipeline a team uses. Wire the shared engineering data layer so architecture, security, and quality checks all read from one authoritative source. Fold in the quality work already in motion so it reports through the same pipeline rather than a separate one.

What you'll do.

• Design and build the automated review pipeline: triage, security, quality, and architecture passes, with the prompts, tooling, and evaluations that keep their output trustworthy.
• Build and maintain the deployment gates that block critical vulnerabilities, across every deploy surface we run.
• Extend the shared data layer so any team can answer ownership, security, and quality questions about any repo on demand, without a one-off integration.
• Instrument the pipeline: measure review turnaround, gate coverage, false positive rates, and cost per run, then act on what the numbers say.
• Build the logging and audit layer that makes AI-assisted and AI-delegated work reviewable after the fact.
• Partner with security, quality engineering, and platform teams to get gates adopted, and write the docs and runbooks that let teams self-serve.
• Treat false positives and noise as first-class bugs. A gate teams route around isn't a gate.

What we're looking for.

• Five or more years building and operating CI/CD systems, developer tooling, or platform infrastructure.
• Hands-on depth in at least two of: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or comparable pipeline systems, plus solid Git and GitHub API experience.
• Strong programming skills in a language we use for tooling (Python, Go, TypeScript, or Ruby).
• Practical experience wiring security scanning into a pipeline, and a clear point of view on where a gate belongs and when it should block.
• Comfort with data work: pulling from multiple sources, modeling it, and making it queryable for other people.
• Experience building with large language models in a production setting: agents or automated workflows, prompt design, tool use, and evaluating output quality.
• A track record of shipping tooling other engineers actually adopted, and the judgment to know when adoption failed because the tool was wrong.

• Competitive compensation, plus all full-time employees participate in our ownership program - because everyone should have a stake in our success.
• Flexible work culture. Our remote, hybrid and in-office collaboration spaces vary by role, team and location.
• Generous time off, including local holidays and our annual “Dim the Lights” period in late December, when teams are encouraged to step back and recharge based on departmental needs.
• Comprehensive wellness programs and mental health support
• Learning and development resources, including professional development tools and tuition reimbursement, to support your growth
• The technology and tools you need to do your best work
• Motivosity employee recognition program
• A culture rooted in inclusivity, support, and meaningful connection

All employees must pass a background check as part of the hiring process. To help protect our teams and systems, we’ve implemented identity verification measures. Candidates may be asked to verify their legal name, current physical location, and provide a valid contact number and residential address, in accordance with local data privacy laws.