Description Location: Burbank, CA (Hybrid - 4 Days Onsite)
Employment Type: Contract, potential FTE conversion
Experience: 8+ Years
Education: Bachelor's Degree Required
About the Opportunity
We are seeking a
Staff Lead Software Engineer to help build the next generation of intelligent infrastructure supporting a modern Digital Supply Chain environment. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives at the intersection of backend engineering, distributed systems, workflow automation, and Generative AI.
You will play a critical role in designing and delivering agentic platforms that power complex business workflows including content mastering, localization, delivery, and media operations. Working closely with product, platform, and AI teams, you will transform emerging AI capabilities into scalable, production-ready solutions that create measurable business impact.
This is a hands-on leadership position where you will influence architecture, mentor engineers, and contribute directly to software development.
What You'll Do
Build Production-Grade AI Platforms
- Transform AI prototypes into scalable, enterprise-ready services.
- Design and develop backend microservices using Java, Kotlin, Python, or TypeScript.
- Deploy and manage services within Kubernetes environments using modern CI/CD practices.
- Build resilient, event-driven architectures leveraging Kafka, SNS/SQS, EventBridge, or similar technologies.
- Develop highly reliable APIs focused on performance, observability, and maintainability.
Design Agentic Systems & AI Middleware
- Build middleware, API gateways, and service layers that securely expose enterprise applications and data to AI agents.
- Create standardized interfaces enabling AI agents to interact with internal systems across the digital supply chain.
- Implement Model Context Protocol (MCP) and related frameworks to manage secure access to tools, metadata, and content repositories.
- Design intelligent orchestration layers that enable autonomous and semi-autonomous workflows.
Lead AI Workflow Innovation
- Develop agentic workflows using technologies such as LangGraph, LangChain, and modern orchestration frameworks.
- Implement routing, tool execution, context management, and decision-making capabilities for AI-powered solutions.
- Establish governance controls, audit logging, approval workflows, and fallback mechanisms to support enterprise-grade AI implementations.
- Integrate AI orchestration into business-critical workflows, including mastering, localization, and content delivery operations.
Provide Technical Leadership
- Lead architecture discussions, technical planning sessions, and design reviews.
- Partner with product managers, machine learning engineers, architects, and platform teams to deliver innovative solutions.
- Mentor engineers and contribute to engineering excellence across the organization.
- Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies in AI, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and software engineering.
Requirements Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
- 8+ years of backend, distributed systems, or platform engineering experience.
- 3+ years of experience developing AI-enabled applications, workflow platforms, or automation solutions.
- Strong proficiency in Java or Kotlin within large-scale production environments.
- Deep understanding of software engineering fundamentals, testing strategies, observability practices, and scalable architecture design.
- Experience building cloud-native applications on AWS or similar cloud platforms.
- Hands-on expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerized application deployment.
- Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CDK, or comparable tools.
- Proven ability to collaborate across technical and business teams while providing technical leadership.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Technology Doesn't Change the World, People Do.
Robert Half is the world's first and largest specialized talent solutions firm that connects highly qualified job seekers to opportunities at great companies. We offer contract, temporary and permanent placement solutions for finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal, and administrative and customer support roles.
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Robert Half will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. All applicants applying for U.S. job openings must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Benefits are available to contract/temporary professionals, including medical, vision, dental, and life and disability insurance. Hired contract/temporary professionals are also eligible to enroll in our company 401(k) plan. Visit roberthalf.gobenefits.net for more information.
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