Lead Software Developer

Title: Lead Software Developer

Location: Chicago, IL

Duration: 12 Months

JOB DESCRIPTION:

The Lead Software Developer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for delivering secure, scalable, and maintainable software while advancing engineering practices across the team. This role combines deep expertise in design and development with leadership responsibilities, including mentoring developers, improving code quality, strengthening CI/CD and testing practices, and collaborating with Product, Architecture, and Delivery to translate business objectives into reliable solutions.

The Lead also provides technical direction to vendors and ensures alignment with internal standards and delivery expectations. The role applies AI responsibly across the full software development lifecycle to enhance productivity, code quality, and system reliability. The Lead serves as Scrum Master when needed, facilitating team ceremonies, removing blockers, and ensuring adherence to Agile practices.

This position follows a hybrid work model, with an expectation of three days per week in the office to support team collaboration and delivery.

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead end to end delivery of features and services using modern frameworks and design patterns, ensuring quality from initial design through production deployment. 

• Drive code quality through design and architecture reviews, code reviews, and strict adherence to Definition of Done, security standards, and build requirements. Act as a primary approver for pull requests and deployment pipelines. 

• Advance CI CD practices, automated testing, observability, and system performance and resiliency to reduce risk and improve delivery speed. 

• Apply AI responsibly across the software development lifecycle, including use cases such as code generation, test creation, static analysis, documentation, and incident analysis, with appropriate oversight and compliance controls. 

• Provide Level 3 application support and lead root cause analysis and resolution of complex production issues. 

• Coach and develop team members through pairing, technical guidance, and structured feedback while promoting a culture of engineering excellence and continuous improvement. 

• Collaborate with Product Owners and Business Systems Analysts to refine requirements and estimate backlog items, and partner with Solution Architecture to ensure alignment with target designs. 

• Work closely with Delivery and Engineering Managers to communicate progress, identify risks, and maintain consistent standards across initiatives. 

• Ensure adherence to organizational SDLC processes, security controls, and compliance requirements, and contribute to the evolution of best practices and shared standards. 

• Perform Scrum Master responsibilities when needed, including facilitating stand ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives, and helping the team maintain focus and delivery flow. 

Required Qualifications 

• Demonstrated experience delivering enterprise software as a senior or lead engineer with ownership of complex systems and responsibility for mentoring team members. 

• Strong proficiency with GitHub, including branching strategies, pull request management, and repository administration. 

• Knowledge of DevSecOps practices, including CI CD, infrastructure automation, monitoring pipelines, application security testing such as SAST, DAST, and SCA, secrets management, and embedding security controls within delivery pipelines. 

• Experience working with Agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban. 

• Deep expertise in Java and Spring frameworks, including Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, for building scalable services and APIs. 

• Strong experience designing and integrating APIs, including building and consuming RESTful services. 

• Proficiency with relational and non-relational databases, with advanced SQL skills in complex queries, performance optimization, and schema design. 

• Hands on experience with test automation and strong practices in unit, integration, and performance testing. 

• Experience applying AI in the software development lifecycle, including practical use of AI assisted coding, test generation, code analysis, and documentation, along with an understanding of safe and effective usage. 

• Proficiency with AWS cloud services, including compute, container orchestration, serverless, API management, storage, databases, and identity and access management. 

• Strong understanding of secure coding practices and observability, including logging, metrics, and distributed tracing. 

• Familiarity with modern frontend frameworks such as Angular and React. 

• Ability to translate business requirements into technical designs and deliver work in iterative increments. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience with Azure DevOps, including pipelines, boards, and repo management. 

• .NET/C# experience (helpful across services, integration, or cross-team initiatives). 

• Knowledge of Oracle database concepts, PL/SQL, APEX and performance considerations (desired). 

• Background contributing to a formal competency framework and coaching others to those standards.