Straight Arrow is on a mission to restore trust in the news by delivering fair, fact-based journalism in a media landscape that too often prioritizes outrage over accuracy. Our small but mighty technology team builds and maintains the platforms that make this mission possible — from the SAN.com web experience to our mobile apps and the infrastructure that ties it all together. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and believe the right engineer can make an outsized difference.

About the Role

We're looking for a Mid-Level Web Software Engineer who brings solid technical chops and a genuine desire to keep growing. This role sits at the intersection of front-end craft, back-end integration, and DevOps awareness. The work is very public-facing - the code you write will be seen by SAN's audience every day, so we care as much about the experience you ship as the systems you help maintain. You’ll be expected to own features end-to-end—from implementation through deployment and monitoring—while contributing to overall system reliability and engineering quality.

If you have a growth mindset, love owning problems end-to-end, and want to work somewhere your contributions actually matter, read on.

What You'll Do

Build and maintain the SAN.com web ecosystem

You'll work across the full web stack — implementing front-end features, making style and UX improvements, tackling more structural projects, and building API integrations. You'll help ensure the site stays fast, polished, and reliable.

Strengthen the codebase with testing and CI/CD improvements

You'll help raise the quality floor — writing tests, identifying gaps in coverage, and making improvements to our continuous integration and delivery pipelines. We believe good DevOps habits are part of being a good engineer, and you'll lean into that.

Collaborate across the engineering team

You'll work with engineers across disciplines to develop cross-platform solutions to shared problems. We're a small team, which means your ideas reach the table quickly and your work doesn't get lost in a queue.

Delight our users through thoughtful product work

You'll partner with user management initiatives and take on new projects aimed squarely at improving the customer experience. We're customer-obsessed here, and we want you to be too.

Requirements

• 3-5 years of experience building and shipping customer-facing products
• 3-5 years of experience building websites with WordPress, including theme and plugin development
• 3-5 years of experience expanding site functionality with React
• 2+ years of experience building APIs to power mobile or cross-platform applications

Nice To Haves

• Experience with web performance optimization
• Experience working with user subscription / management systems (such as piano)
• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and compliance practices
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or similar) and CDN configuration
• Experience implementing analytics, feature flags, or experimentation frameworks

Why Straight Arrow

• End-to-end ownership - you’re invested in your code all the way from local setup to production
• A mission that matters: building technology in service of better journalism
• A small team where bureaucracy is minimal, your work is visible, and your voice carries
• Room to grow — into DevOps, into platform work, into wherever your curiosity takes you

Straight Arrow is on a mission to restore trust in the news by delivering fair, fact-based journalism in a media landscape that too often prioritizes outrage over accuracy. Our small but mighty technology team builds and maintains the platforms that makes this mission possible, from the SAN.com mobile apps to the web experience and the infrastructure that ties it all together. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and believe the right engineer can make an outsized difference.

The Role

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer specializing in React Native development for our customer-facing mobile app, built and shipped in tandem with work on the Straight Arrow website. You will own the mobile codebase end-to-end — from the React Native and Expo layer all the way down to native bridges we've already built into iOS and Android.

This is a deeply hands-on role. We're looking for an engineer whose primary impact is the code itself: the architecture you choose, the patterns you set in the codebase, the bugs you don't ship, the bar you hold in code review. But you'll also be a force multiplier for the entire engineering team, partnering with product, design, QA, and our web engineers to turn complex problems into shipped products.

If you're a strong senior engineer who's also been the person teammates lean on for technical direction, code review, mentorship, and "let me show you how I'd approach that," this role is built for you.

What You'll Do

• Build new experiences that delight customers.
• Own architecture and day-to-day development of our React Native / Expo mobile application.
• Partner closely with our API engineers, not as a downstream consumer, but as a co-author of requirements and contracts.
• Work side-by-side with the web engineering team to ship cohesive, parallel experiences across platforms; coordinate shared patterns, shared concerns, and shared deadlines.
• Collaborate daily with product, design, and QA to translate ambiguous customer problems into clean, shippable solutions.
• Set the technical bar for the mobile codebase through architecture, code review, testing strategy, performance work, accessibility, and release engineering.
• Mentor and uplevel other engineers and act as a force multiplier rather than a single point of throughput.
• Drive technical decisions with a relentless customer focus: what we ship has to work, in the real world, on real devices, for real users.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial recent experience in React Native development.
• Deep, demonstrated expertise with React Native across both iOS and Android, including the practical realities of cross-platform development (platform differences, native modules, performance, app store release processes).
• Hands-on experience using Expo as a development platform - managed workflow, EAS Build / Submit / Update, and the tradeoffs involved.
• Ability to write and maintain native bridges - comfort dropping into Swift/Objective-C and Kotlin/Java when needed.
• A strong customer focus, with a track record of building customer-facing enterprise applications that real people depend on.
• Experience working with an API, helping define requirements, shape contracts, and contribute to implementation decisions.
• Demonstrated technical leadership as a senior IC: setting architectural direction, raising code quality through review and example, and helping less-senior engineers grow through pairing and technical guidance.
• Excellent collaboration skills with cross-functional partners in product, design, QA, and adjacent engineering teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication; comfort operating autonomously in a fully remote environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience integrating with a WordPress backend.
• Experience with user management and subscription / paywall platforms such as Piano.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and mobile-specific delivery (TestFlight, Play Console, OTA updates via EAS).
• Experience working with consent management systems.
• Experience shipping in a media, news, or content-heavy product environment.

Why This Role

• Small, focused team — your work and your judgment will be visible from day one.
• Real ownership of a customer-facing mobile codebase, not a slice of someone else's roadmap.
• Cross-functional partnership with product, design, QA, and web teams — fewer silos, more impact.
• Mission-driven work in a media environment that takes its responsibility to readers seriously.

The Straight Arrow Mindset

• Customer-focused - you realize that a great user experience is critical to the success of the company.
• Data-driven - understanding the importance of good data in driving product decisions.
• Collaborative - you brainstorm with fellow engineers to come up with solutions to problems. You work effectively with stakeholders, translating business needs into technical solutions.
• Learning-Oriented: You stay current with best practices and emerging mobile technologies.

Compensation & Benefits

• The salary range for this position is $150,000-$165,000, depending on experience and qualifications.
• SAN offers comprehensive health and wellness coverage that ensures our employees have the care and coverage they need to stay healthy, build current and future financial security and maintain work-life balance. All full-time employees and their dependents are eligible to enroll in our benefits. That includes generous paid time off, paid holidays and floating holidays; health coverage, vision and dental plans; retirement plans like the company's 401(k) plan with company match; and more.

Straight Arrow is on a mission to restore trust in the news by delivering fair, fact-based journalism in a media landscape that too often prioritizes outrage over accuracy. Our small but mighty technology team builds and maintains the platforms that makes this mission possible, from the SAN.com web experience to our mobile apps and the infrastructure that ties it all together. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and believe the right engineer can make an outsized difference.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives at the intersection of Software, Platform, and Product. This is a high-trust, high-ownership role: you'll be the person our team leans on to make hard technical calls, clear blockers, and elevate everyone around you.

You'll have an impact on the full SAN.com ecosystem — our AWS infrastructure, web and mobile codebases, AI initiatives, and internal tooling. If you're energized by broad scope, enjoy R&D-style exploration as much as production engineering, and want to have a real impact on a growing media company, this role is for you.

What You’ll Do

Own our cloud footprint

You'll be the primary steward of Straight Arrow’s cloud infrastructure — architecting, provisioning, and maintaining our AWS & GCP cloud environments. This includes architecting, designing, and building full customer facing solutions in the cloud, leveraging CI/CD and IaC technologies, with consideration for security, scalability, reliability, and observability. 

Lead AI agent development and implementation

You'll own SAN's AI agents end-to-end: scoping, building, and integrating them meaningfully into our products and workflows. This is a genuine opportunity to shape how a newsroom leverages AI.

Build internal utilities and R&D

You'll accelerate all of SAN engineering by building internal platform products that save the team time, and help the organization move from "interesting idea" to "working thing" faster than we could without you.

Collaborate across Tech, Product, and Analytics leadership

You'll be a trusted technical voice in cross-functional conversations — helping translate business needs into engineering decisions and making sure leadership has what they need to make informed calls.

Be a force multiplier for the engineering team

You'll identify blockers before they compound, find shared solutions, and actively help the team work better together. Your impact will be measured as much by what you enable in others as by what you ship yourself. You'll invest in the growth of the engineers themselves through design discussions, code reviews, and just being someone they can learn from. 

Requirements

• Meaningful experience working within AWS, including serverless architectures (Lambda), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/OpenTofu), and cloud cost/reliability management
• Experience working in mobile app or web development
• Comfortable working across a stack and across teams — this role requires breadth as much as depth
• Strong engineering fundamentals — you write clean, maintainable code and you know why it matters
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects from ambiguous problem to shipped solution
• Experience mentoring or leveling up other engineers

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Wordpress
• Experience with mobile application development in React Native / Expo.
• Experience with user / subscription management utilities (piano)
• Experience with vendor management, integrating with 3rd party utilities
• Exposure to vendor analysis
• Experience working in the media / journalism space

Why Straight Arrow:

• Real ownership, from day one
• A mission that matters: building technology in service of better journalism
• A small team where your work is visible and your voice carries
• The chance to shape both the technical culture and the product roadmap
• A chance to own new greenfield products end to end that positively impact both the internal teams and the customer