Location: Hybrid, Greater Boston area
Start Date: Rolling
About Ivystar
Ivystar is an online productivity and mentoring platform designed to help students grow through 1:1 guidance, planning tools, and skill-building support. We’ve built out our MVP: a platform that connects students with expert mentors on demand, combining the best of Reddit's community model with the booking ease of platforms like TaskRabbit.
We're looking for a part-time Full Stack Developer to join our team for the next phase of development. You’ll work closely with the founder, business team, and early users to refine and extend what we've already built, bringing a thoughtful, privacy-first approach to education technology.
What You’ll Do
- Build on our existing MVP to improve functionality, stability, and user experience.
- Collaborate with the founding team (based at Harvard iLabs) to evolve the platform’s matching, scheduling, and messaging systems.
- Design secure, scalable architecture across both the front end and back end.
- Create a mobile-responsive interface that supports anonymous user handles, shared-screen mentoring, and optional video.
- Develop and manage APIs, databases, and transaction systems for smooth, secure interactions.
- Troubleshoot, debug, and upgrade key features as we transition from MVP to broader launch.
- Implement safety features such as encrypted messaging, user vetting workflows, and data protection.
- Document workflows and hand off knowledge to future tech leads as needed.
What We’re Looking For
- Experience building and shipping full-stack web applications, ideally in education, marketplace, or on-demand services.
- Proficiency in modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Node.js), plus working knowledge of Firebase, MongoDB, or similar.
- Ability to work independently and iteratively in a fast-paced startup environment.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills: you’re comfortable talking with non-technical teammates.
- Experience with secure, user-centered design for platforms that involve minors or sensitive data is a plus.