Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

POLARIS I/O | REMOTE (U.S. ONLY) | FULL-TIME

About Polaris I/O

Polaris I/O provides an integrated go-to-customer platform that combines transformation services, industry insights, and powerful technology to enable B2B companies to protect, retain, and grow large accounts.

Our platform takes an outside-in approach to improving commercial health, utilizing executive buyer insights to inform the orchestration of commercial activities that improve relationships, maximize growth, and scale beyond our engagement.

Role Overview

Polaris I/O is seeking an experienced Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership in the design, development, and evolution of our cloud-based software platforms.

Reporting directly to the Engineering Manager, this role combines advanced software engineering expertise, system architecture, technical mentorship, and cross-team collaboration. You will help guide complex engineering initiatives from technical design through production delivery while remaining an active contributor to our codebase.

You will work across front-end applications, back-end microservices, data workflows, and cloud infrastructure, helping ensure that our systems are scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and cost-effective. You will collaborate closely with engineering teams, technical product managers, and other stakeholders to translate product requirements into well-designed technical solutions.

A core expectation of this position is the proficient and extensive use of agentic coding tools as an integral part of daily software engineering. You will use tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and comparable technologies throughout the development lifecycle, including technical design, implementation, refactoring, testing, debugging, and code review.

As a technical leader, you will also mentor engineers in effective agentic development practices and contribute to the evolution of Polaris I/O’s internal agentic engineering capabilities, including reusable agent workflows, skills, SDK integrations, and supporting automation.

We are looking for a technically accomplished contributor-leader who combines strong architectural judgment, hands-on engineering ability, a commitment to mentoring others, and enthusiasm for advancing software engineering practices through AI-enabled development.

Our Technology Stack

• Front-end: React, TypeScript, Redux or equivalent state management, Tailwind CSS
• Back-end: Python, FastAPI, Node.js, Express, TypeScript
• Databases: Aurora PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Pydantic
• Cloud infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Amazon EKS
• Event-driven architecture: AWS SQS, EventBridge, asynchronous services, and data pipelines
• Configuration and automation: YAML-driven workflows, infrastructure automation, and CI/CD tooling
• Development practices: Automated testing, observability, code review, and agentic coding workflows

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Architecture

• Provide technical leadership across front-end, back-end, and cloud infrastructure development.
• Design and evaluate system-level and component-level architectures spanning application services, APIs, data workflows, cloud infrastructure, and third-party integrations.
• Guide engineering decisions involving service boundaries, REST APIs, asynchronous workflows, message contracts, database models, and error-handling strategies.
• Establish and promote reusable engineering patterns, shared frameworks, coding standards, and development practices.
• Evaluate technical designs for scalability, reliability, security, performance, maintainability, and operational supportability.
• Balance near-term delivery requirements with long-term architectural consistency, extensibility, and platform sustainability.
• Ensure prototypes, reference implementations, and new capabilities are developed as reusable platform building blocks rather than unnecessarily bespoke solutions.
• Document significant technical decisions and help resolve cross-team architectural issues.

Agentic Software Engineering and Enablement

• Use agentic coding tools extensively in daily engineering work, including technical design, code generation, implementation, refactoring, testing, debugging, and code review.
• Lead by example in demonstrating effective, disciplined, and productive agentic software development practices.
• Mentor engineers in the use of agentic coding tools, including task decomposition, context management, agent instructions, workflow design, validation, and human oversight.
• Help establish engineering standards and best practices for AI-assisted development, ensuring that agent-generated code meets expectations for correctness, maintainability, security, and architectural consistency.
• Contribute to the design, implementation, and maintenance of internal agentic development capabilities, including reusable agent workflows, skills, SDK integrations, and supporting automation.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity, code quality, and development consistency through agentic tooling and workflow improvements.
• Evaluate emerging agentic development technologies and recommend their adoption where they provide demonstrable engineering value.

Hands-On Software Development

• Contribute directly to production software, prototypes, reference implementations, and shared platform components.
• Develop and maintain Python and Node.js back-end services, REST APIs, event-driven workflows, and database integrations.
• Build and maintain performant, reusable React and TypeScript front-end components.
• Implement pixel-accurate, component-driven user interfaces from Figma or comparable design specifications.
• Develop and troubleshoot containerized applications deployed to Kubernetes and Amazon EKS.
• Implement secure integrations, workflow automation, data validation, transformation, and configuration-driven capabilities.
• Optimize applications and services for performance, reliability, usability, network latency, and infrastructure cost.
• Improve observability, diagnostics, automated testing, and operational reliability across distributed cloud systems.
• Write clean, testable, reusable, and maintainable production code.

Engineering Delivery and Cross-Team Collaboration

• Serve as a senior technical contributor within agile engineering teams, participating in story analysis, technical design, development, testing, and delivery.
• Collaborate with technical product managers and engineering leadership to translate product and business requirements into actionable engineering work.
• Help break complex initiatives into well-defined technical tasks, identifying dependencies, risks, implementation sequencing, and architectural considerations.
• Coordinate technical work across Data Engineering and Platform Engineering teams as needed.
• Provide technical guidance, implementation recommendations, and tradeoff analysis to support engineering planning and execution.
• Identify blockers, technical risks, and opportunities for improvement early in the delivery process.
• Support technical discovery and solution design for client-driven capabilities when needed, working primarily through product management and engineering leadership.

Team Leadership and Mentorship

• Coach and mentor engineers through technical discussions, pairing, implementation guidance, and constructive feedback.
• Conduct code and design reviews focused on correctness, maintainability, security, performance, and adherence to engineering standards.
• Promote technical ownership, documentation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement across engineering teams.
• Help engineers develop stronger architectural judgment, debugging skills, and effective use of modern development tools.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex technical challenges while enabling other engineers to work independently and avoiding unnecessary delivery bottlenecks.
• Foster a collaborative engineering culture that values technical excellence, accountability, and continuous learning.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including development of production cloud applications or platforms.
• 5+ years of experience in a technical leadership role, such as Lead Engineer, Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Technical Lead.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives across engineering teams without requiring formal people-management authority.
• Strong hands-on proficiency with Python and TypeScript, including the ability to remain an effective individual contributor while fulfilling technical leadership responsibilities.
• Production experience with Python/FastAPI, Node.js/Express, React, PostgreSQL, AWS services, Kubernetes/EKS, and related application technologies.
• Strong system design experience with distributed, event-driven, or cloud-native platforms.
• Thorough understanding of REST APIs, microservices, asynchronous processing, message-driven workflows, systems integration, and database design.
• Experience developing component-driven React user interfaces with strong attention to usability, performance, and accurate implementation of design specifications.
• Substantial hands-on experience using agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or comparable technologies in production software development, with these tools integrated into regular engineering workflows rather than used only for occasional code generation.
• Demonstrated ability to use agentic development workflows effectively across activities such as technical design, implementation, refactoring, testing, and code review.
• Ability to mentor other engineers in effective agentic coding practices, including task decomposition, context management, tool usage, verification, and responsible human oversight.
• Technical depth sufficient to contribute to the implementation and evolution of internal agentic development infrastructure, including workflows, skills, SDK integrations, and automation.
• Strong understanding of the limitations and risks of AI-generated code, with the ability to apply appropriate validation, testing, security, and quality assurance practices.
• Strong debugging, incident analysis, automated testing, code review, and engineering quality practices.
• Ability to identify and communicate architectural tradeoffs, technical risks, dependencies, and security considerations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing, implementing, or customizing reusable agentic coding workflows, agent skills, SDK integrations, or related engineering automation.
• Experience creating reusable software frameworks, shared libraries, integration patterns, or development tooling adopted across engineering teams.
• Experience improving CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, infrastructure automation, and developer workflows.
• Experience evaluating cloud architecture for security, reliability, scalability, performance, and cost.
• Experience contributing to technical discovery, requirements analysis, solution design, or implementation planning.
• Experience delivering software for government, energy, oil and natural gas, utilities, or other regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience coaching engineers in the adoption of new technologies, engineering practices, or development methodologies.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience, certification, or military experience.

Work Expectations

• Work Hours: This is a full-time position requiring employees to be online and actively engaged during standard business hours, with availability for occasional after-hours support.
• Remote Work: This is a fully remote position. All work must be performed within the United States, with regular working hours aligned with the company’s standard business hours.
• Conflict of Interest: You are expected to devote your full professional time and attention to Polaris I/O and not take on other employment or contract work that interferes with your responsibilities, competes with the company, or creates a potential conflict of interest.
• Work Authorization: Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a full-time, ongoing basis without the need for current or future employer sponsorship (for example, we are not able to sponsor employment visas now or in the future).
• Company Meetings: Polaris I/O may hold company meetings lasting several days at locations within the continental United States, generally no more than once or twice annually. Employees must be willing to attend these meetings, with reasonable business travel expenses reimbursed.

Salary

* $175,000–$210,000

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Generous paid time off
• Professional growth opportunities

Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

Work Location: Remote — United States

Polaris I/O is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to any characteristics protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Pay: $175,000.00 - $210,000.00 per year

Benefits

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Vision insurance

Experience

* Software Data: 10 years (Required)

Work Location: Remote