Lead Software Engineer

CRA | Admired Leadership is seeking a Lead Software Engineer for the SaaS application team behind Admired Leadership Digital and ALEX, its AI coaching platform. The role focuses on designing, building, testing, and shipping software across a multi-service platform, while leading technical projects from definition through delivery.

Responsibilities:

• We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to play a key technical role on the SaaS application team behind Admired Leadership Digital (ALD) and ALEX, our AI coaching platform, serving both enterprise and consumer clients
• This is a hands-on engineering role first
• Most of your time will be spent designing, building, testing, and shipping software across a multi-service platform (including our LMS, SSO, ALEX web and mobile, AI backend, and related AWS infrastructure)
• You will work closely with engineers and business stakeholders to understand needs, translate them into practical solutions, and deliver high-quality software that improves the product and user experience
• In addition to your own delivery, you will lead technical projects from definition through delivery: shaping the technical approach, coordinating work across services and contributors, reviewing code, removing blockers, and helping projects land as coherent, high-quality releases
• This role leads projects, not people; it is not a people-management position
• Because our engineering team is small, we are looking for someone who is comfortable wearing multiple hats, contributing across the stack as needed, and stepping into areas that need attention

Requirements:

• JavaScript / TypeScript — senior level
• TDD and automated testing experience
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including APIs, SQL, and relational databases
• Strong AWS experience, including operating and supporting production cloud infrastructure
• DevOps and modern deployment practices
• Infrastructure as Code (we use Terragrunt and OpenTofu)
• Containerized deployment (we use ECS and Fargate)
• AI experience — hands-on use of AI tooling in software development
• Experience designing and shipping features across multiple services or repositories
• Experience leading technical projects across multiple developers, services, or repositories (guiding design, code review, coordination, and delivery)
• Experience collaborating closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders
• Comfort working in a small team, startup-type atmosphere
• must be willing to become full stack quickly
• Full stack experience is a plus
• Ruby on Rails experience is helpful, but not required
• Product development experience
• Authentication / identity work (OAuth, SSO, session and token flows)
• Security-conscious engineering practices
• Mobile development (React Native / Expo)
• Experience designing and building LLM-powered applications
• Exposure to enterprise integrations such as HubSpot, Stripe, Mailgun, SSO, AvaTax, Twilio, Vidyard, and Google Tag Manager / Analytics