Location: Reston, VA
Salary: $175,000.00 USD Hourly - $185,000.00 USD Hourly
Description: Lead Software Engineer (C++ Distributed Systems) - Level 5Location: New York, NY, Denver, CO, Reston, VA or Chicago, IL
Job Type: Full-Time
Salary Range: $175,000-185,000 + bonus eligibility and long-term incentive opportunities, where applicable. (Flexible salary)
Experience Level: Senior / Lead Engineer (Level 5)
About the OpportunityThe Judge Group is seeking an experienced
Lead Software Engineer to join a high-performing engineering organization building large-scale, distributed backend systems that support millions of real-time transactions daily.
This role is ideal for a hands-on technical leader who enjoys solving complex engineering challenges involving scalability, performance, reliability, and distributed computing. You will work alongside talented engineers to design, build, and optimize mission-critical platforms operating in high-volume production environments.
The successful candidate will combine deep C++ expertise with strong systems design skills and the ability to mentor engineers while influencing architecture and technical direction.
What You'll Do- Design, develop, and maintain high-performance backend applications using C++
- Lead the design and implementation of distributed systems and scalable services
- Drive engineering best practices around performance, reliability, maintainability, and observability
- Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and engineering teams to define technical solutions
- Participate in architecture reviews and technical decision-making
- Mentor software engineers and provide technical leadership across projects
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive root cause analysis
- Optimize system performance, scalability, and availability
- Contribute to long-term platform strategy and modernization initiatives
Required Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of professional software development experience
- Strong proficiency in C++ development within production environments
- Experience building and supporting distributed systems at scale
- Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles
- Experience developing on Linux/Unix platforms
- Background in backend systems engineering and networked applications
- Experience with database-backed applications and large-scale system design
- Proven ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
Preferred Qualifications- Experience with high-concurrency and low-latency architectures
- Cloud platform experience (AWS or similar)
- Containerization and orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes
- Experience with Go (Golang)
- Familiarity with distributed databases, caching technologies, and messaging systems
- Experience influencing architecture and technical standards
- Demonstrated success mentoring engineers and leading technical initiatives
What We're Looking ForSuccessful candidates typically bring experience from environments where performance, scalability, uptime, and reliability are critical, including:
- Large-scale SaaS platforms
- Cloud infrastructure organizations
- Financial technology platforms
- Trading systems
- Telecommunications
- Network infrastructure
- Digital media platforms
- Gaming infrastructure
- Data-intensive backend systems
Why Join Us- Opportunity to solve highly complex distributed systems challenges
- Significant technical ownership and leadership responsibility
- Collaborative engineering culture focused on innovation and quality
- Exposure to large-scale, mission-critical production environments
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Career growth opportunities within a high-impact engineering organization
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