Senior Software Engineer, Frontend in San Diego, California at Ascent

Ascent is a leading provider of innovative financial products and student support services that enable more students to access education and achieve academic and economic success. Everything Ascent offers is designed with the best-in-class teams and technology to increase every student's ability to plan, pay, and succeed in their education and career. Ascent's planning tools and financing resources are co-created by students for those in college, graduate school, and career training programs. Ascent offers financial wellness education, student success services, and one-on-one and digital career coaching that put students' academic and professional goals within reach. Ascent has been widely recognized for its strong culture – named “Best Places to Work” by the San Diego Business Journal for the past 5 years – and as an industry leader – named “Best Student Loan” by NerdWallet for the past 3 years.

What You Will Be Doing: The Senior Software Engineer (“Engineer”) will play a key role in the architecture, development, and delivery of our customer-facing and internal applications, while helping shape the next generation of digital products at Ascent. This role is ideal for a senior-level engineer with deep experience building modern web applications with React and production mobile applications with React Native, supported by strong JavaScript and TypeScript expertise, and who can drive high-quality implementation across usability, performance, scalability, and maintainability.

In This Role, You Will:

• Architect, build, and enhance modern web applications and scalable, accessible user interfaces using React, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, and CSS.
• Design reusable components and frontend patterns that improve consistency, maintainability, and development speed.
• Contribute to the development and feature delivery of mobile applications using React Native.
• Collaborate with product, design, and backend teams to refine requirements and deliver exceptional user experiences.
• Improve application performance, quality, and resiliency through profiling, debugging, testing, and continuous optimization.
• Build and improve CI/CD pipelines to support reliable software delivery.
• Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, release planning, and prod support.
• Make pragmatic technical decisions that balance user experience, maintainability, delivery timelines, and long-term platform health.
• Mentor other engineers and help raise engineering standards, code quality, and development best practices across the team.

Desired Skills & Expertise:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience delivering production applications across the full development life cycle.
• Strong hands-on experience building modern frontend applications with React, JavaScript, and TypeScript, with deep knowledge of frontend architecture, component-based design, state management, responsive design, and browser behavior.
• Experience developing mobile applications with React Native, or strong React experience with interest and ability to contribute to React Native applications.
• Experience integrating applications with RESTful APIs and third-party platforms.
• Experience with front-end and mobile testing, CI/CD pipelines, release processes, secure coding, and application reliability in production environments.
• Familiarity with front-end build tools, package management, module bundling, and modern workflows.
• Proficiency with Git-based source control and collaborative development workflows in agile teams with strong ownership and cross-functional partnership.
• Strong debugging, problem-solving, and software design fundamentals, with the ability to reason through complex application behavior.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS and modern deployment environments is a plus.
• Prior experience in financial services, lending, or other regulated environments is a plus.

Qualities We Look For In Our Candidates:

• Strong product mindset with a passion for building intuitive, high-quality user experiences.
• High ownership, accountability, and follow-through, with a collaborative approach across engineering, product, and design.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work well in a team, share context clearly, ask thoughtful questions, and collaborate effectively across technical and non-technical groups.
• Commitment to engineering excellence, pragmatic problem-solving, continuous learning, and mentoring others.

Competitive pay with bonus, and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but not limited to:

• Compensation includes base salary of $125,000 - $150,000 commensurate with experience, plus bonus and options.
• Company Stock Options
• 401(k) + Company Match
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Annual HSA contribution of $1,700
• Life insurance, disability, and critical illness
• 14 Paid Holidays! Eleven (11) + Two (2) Community Days + Your Birthday!
• Snacks and drinks in the office
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Generous paid leave policies
• $2,000 Vacation Incentive Plan after 3 years + $1,000 Sabbatical Day
• Wellness, Work from Home funds, and more!

The Job Description is intended to be a general representation of the responsibilities and requirements of the job. However, the description may not be all-inclusive, and responsibilities and requirements are subject to change.