Lead Software Engineer (Full-stack) - Contract

Very is a fully distributed technology firm that specializes in creating efficient, scalable solutions for various clients. The Lead Software Engineer will serve as the key technical architect across multiple client engagements, ensuring that system designs align with business outcomes while contributing to high-quality code and technical leadership.

Responsibilities:

• Lead architecture reviews, ensuring technical integrity, maintainability, and security
• Partner with Product Managers and Technical Leads to translate client needs into technical plans and deliverables
• Contribute high-quality, production-ready code, modeling best practices for implementation and testing
• Ensure adherence to Very’s standards for code quality, testing, and documentation
• Create and maintain automated tests across all layers of the stack
• Develop and manage deployments, CI/CD pipelines, logging, monitoring, and alerting
• Support project health through proactive technical risk identification and mitigation
• Participate in code reviews, offering constructive feedback that improves overall quality
• Contribute to recruitment, onboarding, and development of engineering talent
• Represent Very in client meetings and at industry events as a subject-matter expert
• Lead junior engineers on client programs through development and 24/7 on-call rotation and assist in diagnosing and resolving production issues

Requirements:

• BS or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
• 10+ years of professional software development experience
• Professional backend development experience using Java or another modern object-oriented language. Experience writing production Java applications is preferred, but exceptional backend engineers with comparable experience who are confident they can become productive in Java quickly are encouraged to apply
• 3+ years in a technical leadership role overseeing cross-functional engineering teams
• Proven success delivering full-stack systems from concept to production
• Demonstrated ability to maintain public facing production systems at scale
• Experience leading complex projects involving platform, backend and frontend development
• Strong client-facing communication and executive presentation skills
• Deep expertise in modern backend application development. Experience with frameworks such as Dropwizard, Spring Boot, Django, FastAPI, or comparable production frameworks is valued. For the initial client engagement, you'll primarily be working with Java and Dropwizard
• Strong front-end experience in React, Expo, Vite, TypeScript
• Skilled in relational and non-relational data modeling
• Extensive knowledge in building from scratch and supporting event driven cloud platforms in AWS and Azure including security, logging, monitoring, observability and performance at scale
• Experience working with AWS services including: Lambda, ECS, Fargate, RDS, CloudFront, CloudWatch, SNS, SQS
• Highly proficient in CI/CD automation (GitHub Actions) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or Pulimi)
• Must be US-based
• US Citizen (required)
• Professional services or consulting experience strongly preferred