Lead Software Engineer

Walker & Dunlop is a leading provider of capital to the commercial real estate industry, committed to creating meaningful change in communities. The Lead Software Engineer will define the technical vision and engineering standards for the Loan Origination and Servicing platform, ensuring it remains resilient and secure while guiding long-term architectural decisions.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture, design and delivery of scalable, high-quality web applications across new and existing product lines
• Own major initiatives end-to-end — from technical vision and architecture through development, deployment and long-term evolution
• Define and evolve our core technology stack (Python, FastAPI, Vue.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes), establishing best practices and engineering standards
• Drive architectural decisions across services, APIs, data models and infrastructure to ensure scalability, reliability and maintainability
• Partner with Product Management, Product Design and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into durable, well-structured technical solutions
• Champion engineering excellence in performance, reliability, observability, testing strategy and CI/CD maturity
• Lead code reviews, mentor engineers and foster a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement
• Contribute to hiring, onboarding and technical talent development
• Identify and mitigate technical risk, balancing long-term architectural health with near-term business priorities
• Perform other duties as assigned

Requirements:

• 10+ years of software development experience, including leading complex technical initiatives
• Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science or a related field preferred
• Proven experience designing and evolving API ecosystems, including OpenAPI specifications, versioning strategies and service-level contracts
• Experience implementing mapping and geospatial solutions (e.g., Mapbox) and integrating location-based data
• Deep experience with AWS, event-driven architectures and scalable, client-facing data applications
• Extensive hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes and production-grade deployments
• Deep expertise in Python (3.6+) and modern backend frameworks such as FastAPI, with emphasis on clean architecture, scalability and maintainability
• Advanced proficiency in SQL database design, performance tuning and large-scale optimization
• Strong experience designing distributed backend systems
• Extensive experience with queues, background processing, scheduled jobs, caching strategies and high-throughput system optimization
• Strong system design skills, including trade-off analysis, scalability modeling and fault tolerance
• Deep understanding of testing methodologies (unit, integration, contract and end-to-end) and test strategy
• Ability to create clear architecture diagrams and technical documentation to influence engineering direction
• Experience leveraging AI tools to accelerate development, documentation and testing
• Familiarity with Event Sourcing and/or Domain-Driven Design (DDD) in complex domains
• Demonstrated leadership mindset with strong ownership and accountability
• Ability to show ownership of your work, take on challenges and acknowledge growth opportunities, and demonstrate patience when learning new processes
• Courtesy, respect, and thoughtfulness in teaming with colleagues and other stakeholders
• Experience in Real Estate, Financial Services or Capital Markets strongly preferred