Partner Implementation Engineer

Department: Technology (in partnership with Partner Success & Revenue Operations)
Reports to: CTO

Who we are

At Podium Education, we believe that a college degree should be a springboard to achieving the American Dream. Yet, American Higher Education is at a crossroads: half of college graduates end up underemployed, and unemployment rates for new college grads are the highest in generations. As a result, confidence in the investment in a college education has hit an all-time low. 

Our mission is to help solve this problem and change the lives of millions of students.

We do this by partnering with colleges and companies to supercharge the undergraduate degree by providing students with the experience, career exposure, and skills to launch a great career. Podium serves a population of over 2,000,000 students across 100 of the largest and most well-known universities in the country, including Georgetown, UNC, Harvard, ASU, and Texas A&M. 

Everything we do and how we measure our success is about impacting students’ lives:

• Student Experience - Customer NPS is better than Netflix, Apple, and Amazon.

• Student Access - Programs are for credit, count towards graduation, and are financial aid eligible. One-third of our students are first-generation to attend college.

• Student Outcomes - Two-thirds of students say Podium helped them achieve tangible career outcomes within six months (eg, “I got my first internship”). Over 90% report feeling more confidence and clarity in their career journey.

About the Role

The Partner Implementation Engineer is the primary technical partner for higher education institutions during implementation and after launch. Working with university IT teams, Marketing, Partner Operations, Engineering, and internal Technology teams, this role translates institutional requirements into scalable solutions and ensures successful launches across communications, authentication, integrations, websites, and data exchange.

This is a customer-facing role for a curious, practical problem solver who can lead technical conversations, investigate complex issues, and build trusted relationships with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Core Responsibilities

Partner Consulting & Solution Design

• Lead technical discovery and serve as the partner’s primary technical advisor from implementation through post-launch support.

• Assess institutional environments and guide DNS configuration; SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication; allowlisting, filtering, and email security configuration; SSO; domain verification; security reviews; data exchange requirements; and partner network testing.

• Translate technical requirements and risks into clear recommendations for university IT teams and internal business stakeholders.

Implementation, Validation & Troubleshooting

• Validate automated and internally completed implementations, identify dependencies or launch blockers, and confirm technical readiness before launch.

• Test communications, registration, integrations, and partner workflows; troubleshoot domain and network issues, email deliverability, sender reputation, SMS messaging, messaging workflows, and other technical onboarding concerns.

• Investigate complex school IT issues—including email security systems such as Proofpoint—and coordinate resolution with Engineering or specialized internal resources when needed.

Platform & Integration Expertise

• Develop strong working knowledge of Twilio, Mailgun, Google Postmaster Tools, SFTP, APIs, and the broader communications and partner integration ecosystem.

• Read and interpret API documentation and support automation using cron jobs, SFTP, JavaScript, or other scripting approaches.

• Build familiarity with Front, Iterable, Duda, and Aircall to support connected partner and communication workflows.

Qualifications

• 3–6 years of experience in a customer-facing technical support, solutions engineering, or implementation role, including direct work with customer or partner IT teams.

• Working knowledge of DNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, email authentication, APIs, integrations, debugging, and technical troubleshooting.

• Experience supporting email and SMS systems, including deliverability, sender reputation, authentication, and messaging workflows.

• Strong communication, emotional intelligence, documentation, organization, and the ability to bridge technical and non-technical discussions.

• A systematic, proactive approach to risk identification and problem-solving in a collaborative startup environment.

• Preferred experience in higher education and experience using AI tools to improve technical troubleshooting, documentation, automation, and implementation efficiency. 

Growth Opportunities

As our partnerships and platform evolve, this role can grow into Student Information System (SIS) integrations, higher education integration platforms, advanced Product and Engineering partnerships, and ownership of a broader partner integration strategy.

Benefits

• 401k, Health, Vision and Dental insurance packages

• Short term disability insurance

• Unlimited Paid Time Off

• Discounted Wellhub Membership

• Access to 3 Mental Health Applications

• One Medical Membership

• 8 Company-Paid for Therapy Sessions

• Free access to upskill through our Global Experiential Programs

• Excellent Birthing and Bonding Leave policies

• Sleep coach for post-partum and infant coaching

• Student and Partner focused half days every First Friday of the month

• Summer Fridays - half day on Friday during the summer months

• Extremely talented and intelligent co-workers

• A massive impact on universities and the lives of others, every single day