Lead Software Engineer

Overview

Our organization focuses on building and delivering cloud-based solutions and software that improve the taxpayer experience, and empower property tax offices in the state of Texas to achieve more. Our software engineering team is responsible for our core product, Tax Office 4 which is used to collect over $19 billion dollars of property tax revenue each year in the state of Texas.

We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join our team. As part of our team, you will be a technical and thought leader, driving us forward as we strive to complete our software modernization journey. The ideal person for this role has a deep understanding of software and database (SQL) design and architecture principles, with a passion for building solutions that scale.

This position offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with engineers, operating in a startup-like environment to tackle our next set of significant challenges. You will be joining the project at its inception, allowing your ideas to shape its future direction. You will be empowered to envision, design, code, validate, and deploy key features with substantial customer impact. There are numerous opportunities to make a significant impact and grow rapidly within our expanding organization.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to a team of five software engineers, fostering growth and enhancing team capability without direct managerial responsibility.
• Lead software modernization efforts in partnership with the CTO, specifically transitioning legacy VB codebases into robust, maintainable, and scalable C# cloud-native solutions.
• Identify and execute strategies to refactor legacy SQL stored procedures into streamlined, maintainable code, clearly separating business logic from data access layers.
• Design and implement end-to-end cloud-native solutions leveraging Azure technologies, Kubernetes, Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi/Terraform), automated testing frameworks (Playwright/Selenium), and CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions).
• Own and maintain high standards for code quality, performance, scalability, maintainability, and adherence to best practices across the software development lifecycle.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders, including product managers, support, and engineers, to accurately capture requirements and translate them into clear technical designs and actionable plans.
• Engage periodically with product management teams to clarify customer needs, conduct technical research, and validate solutions to ensure alignment with user expectations.
• Establish, optimize, and maintain continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to streamline build, test, and deployment processes within the Azure cloud environment.
• Continuously evaluate and introduce new technologies, tools, and best practices to enhance the team’s productivity, efficiency, and software reliability.
• Drive consistency in observability, monitoring, and operational excellence, ensuring robust, highly available, and scalable cloud solutions.
• Contribute to architectural discussions, demonstrating expertise in software and database architecture principles, and actively support strategic technology decision-making.
• Promote a proactive culture of knowledge-sharing, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence throughout the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical discipline AND 8+ years technical engineering experience coding primarily in the .NET framework using C#, though experience will be considered for languages including but not limited to C, C++, Java, JavaScript, or Python

OR equivalent experience

• Extensive hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server, demonstrating deep expertise in SQL query optimization, performance tuning, database architecture, and complex stored procedure refactoring.
• Experience with modern front-end frameworks such as Blazor (preferred), React, Angular or Next.js and Microsoft backend frameworks including .NET Core
• 5+ years of experience designing, building, and managing scalable, reliable, and high-performance SaaS applications within an Azure cloud environment.
• 5+ years of experience establishing and maintaining high operational quality standards, mentoring engineering teams, and fostering technical excellence at both team and organizational levels.
• 5+ years of experience collaborating with stakeholders to gather requirements, translate business needs into technical specifications, and successfully delivering outcomes through other Software Development Engineers across the organization.
• Demonstrated experience with cloud-native tools and technologies including Kubernetes, Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi/Terraform), automated testing frameworks (Playwright/Selenium), and CI/CD pipeline management (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions).
• Familiarity with compliance standards such as SOC 2 or ISO is beneficial but not required.