Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

Location: West Des Moines, IA
Employment Type: Contingent Resource Assignment

About the Role

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will design, build, and deliver high-quality, scalable software solutions that improve developer experience and accelerate enterprise delivery. You will work closely with product owners, engineers, and platform stakeholders to solve complex problems, influence technical direction, and support modernization initiatives across the organization.

This role requires strong technical judgment, collaboration across teams, and the ability to operate autonomously while recognizing when broader architectural alignment is needed.

Responsibilities

Technical Analysis & Problem Solving

• Analyze requirements for developer enablement frameworks, tools, and platform capabilities.
• Evaluate existing systems, constraints, and tradeoffs to recommend clear, actionable solutions.
• Apply strong analytical and diagnostic skills to guide technical decisions in complex or ambiguous scenarios.

Solution & Feature Design

• Contribute to the design and prototyping of scalable platform services and reusable capabilities.
• Build proofs of concept to assess feasibility, risks, and architectural alignment early in the development cycle.
• Ensure solutions follow established architectural standards and modern design patterns.

Engineering Execution & Delivery

• Break down complex initiatives into iterative, measurable deliverables.
• Deliver production-ready, well-tested, maintainable code.
• Design systems that are resilient, scalable, high-performing, and reliable.
• Proactively identify and mitigate technical and delivery risks.
• Work independently while escalating cross-cutting or architectural decisions when appropriate.
• Thrive in a fast-paced, large-scale enterprise engineering environment.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with product owners to refine scope, acceptance criteria, and definitions of done.
• Collaborate with Principal Engineers to apply and evolve common patterns and platforms.
• Participate in demos, feedback loops, and adoption support efforts.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers across multiple workstreams.
• Communicate clearly and effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, or equivalent practical experience gained through work, consulting, training, military service, or education.
• Hands-on experience with modern engineering stacks including:Java, Spring Boot, React, Microservices architecturesGitHub Actions or similar CI/CD toolsKafka or event-driven platformsMongoDB or NoSQL data storesObservability and monitoring tooling
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures and CI/CD best practices.
• Experience applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD) concepts.
• Experience with automated testing and quality engineering practices.
• Strong debugging, diagnostics, and performance tuning skills.
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex technical problems using structured analysis and data-driven thinking.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience contributing to platform or developer tooling initiatives.
• Experience working in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Passion for improving developer experience and engineering productivity.

Leadership & Decision-Making Scope

• Owns design and implementation decisions for assigned services or features.
• Influences technical approaches within a squad or workstream.
• Escalates major architectural decisions to Principal Engineers when needed.
• Coaches peers on best practices, coding standards, and modern development patterns.
• Contributes feedback and insights to shape platform and engineering strategy.

What You Bring

• A builder mindset with a pragmatic approach to problem solving.
• A strong focus on delivering customer and business value.
• Comfort working with ambiguity in fast-moving environments.
• A collaborative, inclusive approach with a natural inclination to mentor and support others.