Software Engineer Group Lead

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) seeks a Software Engineer Group Lead to guide development of online systems supporting world-class radio telescopes. You will lead a small team building scalable, reliable web and backend services for proposal submission, data access, and observing tools. Responsibilities include technical leadership, architecture decisions, code reviews, and mentoring engineers while remaining hands-on. Collaborate closely with scientists, data engineers, and IT to deliver secure, high-performance software that enables groundbreaking astronomical research and global scientific collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of online web and backend services for telescope user workflows
• Provide technical direction, architecture decisions, and code reviews
• Mentor and coach software engineers, fostering best engineering practices
• Collaborate with scientists and stakeholders to translate research needs into software
• Ensure performance, reliability, security, and scalability of production systems
• Oversee agile planning, task prioritization, and delivery of releases
• Maintain hands-on involvement in coding, testing, and troubleshooting
• Integrate applications with scientific data pipelines and observatory systems

Required Skills

• Software architecture
• Web application development
• Backend APIs (REST/Graph
• QL)
• Python or Java
• Java
• Script/Type
• Script
• Cloud or virtualized environments
• Relational/No
• SQL databases
• Linux systems
• Agile/Scrum leadership
• CI/CD pipelines