Lead Software Engineer

About the Role

• We're looking for a hands-on Technical Lead to guide a small, technically strong engineering team (three engineers + a PM). This is not a traditional management role, expect about 2 days/week on lead duties (direction, priorities, architecture) and the rest hands-on in the code.

• Note: This position is open only to local candidates residing in Rockville, MD | McLean, VA | Washington, DC. Selected candidates must be able to complete a technical assessment and attend an in-person (F2F) interview

What You'll Do:

• Provide technical and architectural direction to the team

• Dig into existing codebases, identify what needs to change or improve

• Help set engineering priorities and turn product initiatives into actionable work

• Simplify and modernize legacy components where possible

• Use AI-assisted development tools to speed up code understanding and delivery

• Support a migration from Active Directory to a modern identity platform (PingOne)

Tech Environment:

• Backend: Java / Spring Boot (primary focus)

• Architecture: Microservices on AWS ECS

• Frontend: Angular/TypeScript (a strong front-end dev is already on the team, so backend depth matters most)

• Domain: Enterprise identity & access management (IAM); managing accounts and access across multiple user/organization types with embedded business rules

Ideal Background:

• 10+ years of hands-on experience with Java and Spring Boot

• Deep Java/Spring Boot and microservices experience

• Hands-on AWS/ECS experience

• Experience modernizing or refactoring legacy applications

• Prior Tech Lead / Lead Engineer experience directing other engineers

ª Enterprise IAM experience; PingOne experience is a strong plus

• Comfortable using AI tools to accelerate development

• Strong communicator who can drive technical discussions, not just take direction