Senior Software Engineer - Salt Lake City

At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives. Our goal is to amplify that power by creating intuitive products that simplify learning and personal development, facilitate meaningful relationships, and inspire people to go further in their education and careers. We do this by giving smart, creative, passionate people opportunities to create awesome. And that's where you come in:

Our cloud-native solutions serve more than 8,000 educational institutions in over 100 countries. We are redefining software engineering by embedding Artificial Intelligence throughout our development lifecycle to multiply engineering velocity, code quality, and security.

We are seeking an autonomous, high-impact Senior Software Engineer to join our core product engineering team dedicated to Canvas LMS—the cornerstone open-source ecosystem powering global education (accessible at https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms). In this role, your playground will be your entire team’s area, and you will drive work from definition to delivery with minimal support, unblocking yourself and others.

This is not a traditional development role. You will join an elite, highly efficient engineering team that treats AI tools like Claude Code and Gemini as core workflow primitives. You will champion the use of AI to scale productivity, improve test coverage, enforce security gates, and compress the build-review-validate loop for a true multiplier effect.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Own and drive work from definition through delivery within our Canvas LMS core product engineering team (see https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms).

• Architect, develop, and maintain complex backend services and features for Canvas and related open-source products.

• Masterfully leverage AI-powered engineering tools (Claude Code, Gemini, Github Copilot, and others) to scale productivity, automate repetitive tasks, expand test coverage, and accelerate the development cycle.

• Review and maintain large portions of the Canvas codebase, providing thoughtful, high-quality code reviews focused on maintainability, scalability, and security.

• Design and implement robust testing strategies in partnership with Quality Engineering, eliminating regressions and unreliable test scenarios.

• Collaborate closely with Product and Design teams to translate requirements and user experience prototypes into robust, accessible APIs and services.

• Continuously build and refine internal tools or workflows (such as ticketing hooks, cloud development environments, or IDE extensions) to increase team efficiency and velocity.

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, support peer growth, and contribute to a strong, collaborative engineering culture.

• Play a key role in incident response, production issue resolution, and blameless post-mortems to continually improve product reliability.

• Participate in the recruitment process by interviewing candidates and providing evidence-based evaluation.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW AND HAVE

• Demonstrated experience delivering scalable, enterprise-grade SaaS applications as a software engineer (ideally in a cloud-native environment).

• Expertise in Ruby on Rails, Node.js, React.js, and Postgres.

• Advanced proficiency with AI-augmented engineering workflows, using tools like Claude Code, Gemini, Github Copilot, or related developer agents.

• Familiarity with Git/Github and Gerrit version control workflows.

• Strong command of architectural best practices, system design, and test-driven development.

• Experience collaborating with Product and Design teams, including translating Figma prototypes into functional backend systems.

• A strong understanding of accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA standards, semantic HTML, interoperability with assistive technologies).

• Exposure to modern cloud infrastructure (AWS, Docker, DataDog, Observe) and observability tooling.

• An autonomous, proactive work style—comfortable navigating ambiguity, independently unblocking yourself and others, and working under strategic direction.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to mentor others and contribute to a positive, high-performance engineering team culture.

Get in on all the awesome at Instructure!

We offer competitive, meaningful benefits in every country where we operate. While they vary by location, here's a general idea of what you can expect:

• 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

We believe in hiring great people and treating them right. The more diverse we are, the better our ideas and outcomes.

Instructure is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We comply with applicable employment and anti-discrimination laws in every country where we operate.

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.

Any attempt to misrepresent personal or professional information will result in disqualification.