Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer (US-Remote)

Role Overview

About Give Lively

Give Lively builds better fundraising technology for nonprofits and gives it away for free. We help nonprofits create donation pages, run campaigns, manage events, and raise more money for their causes.

We're a small, mission-driven engineering team building software that has real-world impact for nonprofits and donors.

About the role

Give Lively is looking for a Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer to support product development, reduce backlog, and help the team continue building a reliable fundraising platform for nonprofits.

This is a senior engineering role first. We're looking for someone with deep Ruby on Rails experience, strong technical judgment, and the ability to lead larger projects, write clear technical specs, and support less senior engineers.

This role will also help us evolve how we use AI-assisted development tools. We use tools like Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, and similar systems to accelerate implementation, but quality matters. We're looking for someone who uses AI responsibly, understands the underlying Ruby and Rails execution deeply, and can rigorously verify code before it reaches production.

This is not a role for someone who blindly pastes AI-generated code. It is for a senior engineer who can use AI as a force multiplier while staying accountable for code quality, maintainability, and reliability.

What success looks like

You will help Give Lively ship high-quality Rails code, reduce engineering backlog, and improve the team's ability to use AI tools safely and effectively.

Success means:

• You contribute reliable, maintainable Ruby on Rails code.
• You help cover engineering capacity during planned leave periods.
• You pair effectively with existing engineers.
• You write clear technical specs, architecture notes, and documentation.
• You help brief and support less senior engineers on larger projects.
• You use AI tools as a force multiplier without compromising quality.
• You take full accountability for the quality, security, and maintainability of the code you ship.

What you'll do

• Build and maintain features in a Ruby on Rails application.
• Collaborate with product managers and engineers to define and deliver product work.
• Pair with engineers and help the team move through backlog items.
• Participate in architectural discussions and technical decision-making.
• Write clear technical specs, implementation notes, and documentation.
• Use AI-assisted development tools to support coding, testing, refactoring, and documentation.
• Review and verify AI-assisted code before it is merged.
• Help improve team practices around responsible AI-assisted software development.
• Improve reliability, maintainability, and test coverage across the platform.

Must haves

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying web-based products.
• Significant Ruby on Rails experience.
• Experience working in mature or monolithic Rails applications.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, patterns, and abstractions.
• Experience writing maintainable, well-tested production code.
• Strong written communication, technical documentation, and spec-writing skills.
• Ability to lead larger projects and brief/support less senior engineers.
• Experience working closely with product managers in an agile environment.
• Comfort with pair programming and collaborative development.
• Experience using AI development tools such as Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, or similar.
• High accountability for code quality.
• Interest in supporting a philanthropic mission.

Nice to haves

• Ability to explain how you prompt, guide, review, and verify AI-assisted code.
• Experience with Gherkin, BDD, or acceptance-spec-driven development.
• Experience teaching AI-assisted development workflows to other engineers.
• Experience defining internal AI coding standards or guardrails.
• Experience with Heroku, Postgres, CircleCI, CloudFront, or Terraform.
• Experience scaling Rails systems.
• Experience with payment, donation, fintech, billing, or transaction-heavy platforms.
• Experience in small, mission-driven engineering teams.

Current stack

Ruby on Rails powers our services. We use Heroku, Postgres, CloudFront, CircleCI, Terraform, Git, and modern AI-assisted development tools to build and deliver software.

What Will You Get:

• Excellent Medical/Dental/Vision benefits-- you don't pay a monthly premium nor deductible, we cover it 100%
• 401k match program that grants a 75% match of all your contributions, vested 100% on Day 1.
• PTO/Paid Holidays
• $1k/yr professional development stipend
• Work/life balance, focused on a sustainable workload
• An experience you'll love and the knowledge you're doing better for yourself and the world
• The chance to make an impact with a highly motivated, talented, and fast-growing team