Lead Software Engineer
Posted
Summary
Lead engineer for a law firm's internal team: design and deliver full-stack .NET (C#) + React/Next.js applications on Microsoft Azure, integrate GenAI features (LLM, RAG, semantic search, agentic workflows), set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and own production reliability. Hybrid role in Chicago (3 days onsite).
Lead Software Engineer
Salary: Open + Bonus
Location: Chicago, IL
Hybrid: 3 days onsite, 2 days remote
*We are unable to provide sponsorship for this role*
Qualifications
- A minimum of 8 years of professional software engineering experience
- .NET (C#)
- React (or Next.js)
- Microsoft Azure
- Azure App Service
- Azure Container Apps/AKS
- Azure SQL
- Azure Service Bus
- Azure OpenAI Service
- Must have built production applications in Azure from the ground up.
- System design and cloud architecture.
- REST/GraphQL APIs.
- Microservices and distributed applications.
- SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, or similar.
- CI/CD (Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions).
Preferred
- Workflow automation platforms (n8n, Temporal).
- AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code preferred, Codex also relevant).
- Enterprise software development experience.
Responsibilities
- Lead the design and delivery of full-stack applications using .NET, React/Next.js, and Azure, with ownership from architecture through production support.
- Set engineering standards for code quality, testing, performance, and security, and hold the team to them through active code authorship and thorough code review.
- Make architectural decisions for new features and systems, weighing trade-offs and ensuring solutions are maintainable, observable, and built to scale.
- Lead the integration of AI and GenAI capabilities into Firm applications, including LLM-powered features, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, semantic search, and agentic workflows.
- Mentor engineers through pairing, design reviews, and ongoing feedback.
- Work with product managers, designers, and architects to turn business requirements into clear technical plans and realistic delivery milestones.
- Own the reliability of production systems: set observability standards, lead incident response, and see issues through to root cause.
- Apply security best practices across the stack, including authentication, authorisation, and data protection, with particular care given the sensitivity of legal data.
- Partner with DevOps and Infrastructure on CI/CD pipelines, container platforms (Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Container Apps), and cloud deployment patterns.