Lead software engineer Jobs in Alexandria, VA

Description : Requisition Title

Lead Software Engineer

Project Description

's Surveillance Platform and Analytics team is seeking an exceptional Lead Software Engineer with strong technical leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset to guide the design and development of innovative full-stack solutions. This role combines hands-on technical contribution with team leadership, architectural guidance, and strategic technical direction for business-critical surveillance systems that protect market integrity.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned technologist who balances technical depth with leadership breadth, mentors engineers, drives architectural decisions, and leverages cutting-edge technologies including AI to enhance both team productivity and product capabilities. This role provides clear progression to Staff / Principal Engineer positions.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership : Lead the design and architecture of complex, distributed systems based on business needs; define technical direction, evaluate new technologies, and drive adoption of best practices

Team Mentorship : Guide and mentor senior and mid-level engineers, fostering their technical growth through code reviews, technical guidance, and career development

Full-Stack Development : Design and build critical enterprise applications leveraging Java, JavaScript / Angular, Spring Boot, REST / Web Services, and big-data technologies

Cloud-Native Architecture : Architect and implement highly scalable, resilient solutions on AWS leveraging serverless and container technologies (Lambda, ECS, S, RDS, EMR)

Agile Collaboration : Partner closely with architects, principal engineers, product owners, and management to align technical execution with business objectives and translate requirements into robust solutions

Distributed Systems Expertise : Lead initiatives involving microservices, event-driven architectures, and big-data technologies across the team

AI Integration Leadership : Drive initiatives to leverage AI technologies (generative AI, LLMs, AWS AI services) for both developer productivity and product innovation

DevOps Excellence : Champion CI / CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, and observability practices across the team

Innovation & Strategy : Drive POCs, evaluate emerging technologies, and lead adoption of innovations that provide competitive advantage

Cross-Team Influence : Collaborate with other teams and leaders to share knowledge, establish engineering standards, and drive organization-wide technical initiatives

Ownership & Quality : Set the standard for code quality, tackle the most complex technical challenges, and demonstrate strong ownership and self-starter mentality

Basic Qualifications

Education : Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or other relevant Engineering discipline (Master's preferred)

Leadership Experience : + years in software engineering with + years in technical leadership or lead engineer roles demonstrating team mentorship and architectural decision-making

AI Experience : Proven experience leading AI integration initiatives and leveraging AI technologies to drive developer productivity and incorporate AI capabilities into software solutions

Software Engineering : + years of experience building full-stack software using Java, JavaScript, REST / Web Services, Angular, and Spring Boot

Cloud Expertise : + years of experience architecting and building solutions on AWS Cloud (ECS, Lambda, RDS, S, EMR, etc.)

Big Data : + years of experience working with big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Presto, or AWS EMR

Database Skills : + years of experience designing schemas, writing complex SQL queries, and optimizing database performance

Scripting : Strong proficiency in Unix shell, Python, Perl, Groovy, or similar scripting languages

Communication : Strong technical communication skills including documentation, presentations, and stakeholder management

Preferred Qualifications

Extensive experience designing and architecting enterprise-scale systems with complex business requirements

Deep understanding of AWS Well-Architected Framework with ability to conduct architecture reviews

Experience architecting and leading AI / ML initiatives including production GenAI applications; familiarity with MLOps practices, LangChain, vector databases, or RAG architectures

Expert-level experience designing and implementing CI / CD pipelines at scale and DevOps practices

Production experience with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes / EKS) and container security

Advanced experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK)

Strong background in monitoring, observability, and SRE practices (CloudWatch, Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana)

Expert knowledge of microservices, event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, SNS), and distributed systems patterns

Deep understanding of secure coding practices, OWASP, and AWS security best practices (IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager)

Proven track record leading business-critical, large-scope projects with multiple stakeholders

Experience influencing without authority and driving consensus across technical teams

Track record of innovation through patents, publications, open-source contributions, technical thought leadership, or POCs

Experience conducting technical interviews and participating in hiring decisions

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