Senior Software Engineer

Position: Senior Software Engineer (Contract-to-Hire)

Location: Remote (U.S.)

Comp: Competitive hourly contract rate with intent to convert to full-time

Reports to: CTO

Must Have: Deep production experience with traditional, lightweight Perl in a large, mature application environment, plus strong SQL/MySQL skills

Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help modernize and extend a successful enterprise SaaS platform that has supported Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 customers for more than two decades.

This is not a greenfield build, and it is not a complete rewrite. The platform is mature, stable, and highly configurable, with a substantial backend built in Perl. The right engineer will be comfortable stepping into an established codebase, learning how it works, and improving it incrementally without introducing unnecessary complexity or attempting to replace the platform prematurely.

This role is initially structured as contract-to-hire, with the potential to become a long-term senior technical position as the engineering organization grows.

What You'll Do

• Become deeply familiar with a large, mature Perl-based SaaS platform and its underlying architecture.
• Design and implement new features while maintaining the stability of a production application serving enterprise customers.
• Modernize portions of the application by introducing cleaner API boundaries and JSON-based services.
• Improve application performance, scalability, and maintainability through thoughtful engineering rather than wholesale rewrites.
• Write and optimize SQL queries to support complex business workflows and large data sets.
• Collaborate with leadership to prioritize modernization initiatives and technical improvements.
• Use AI development tools such as Claude or Codex to accelerate development while independently validating and improving generated code.
• Help establish the technical foundation for future front-end modernization and long-term platform evolution.
• Document complex systems and work through challenging architectural problems that require deep understanding of the existing codebase.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Significant hands-on experience developing and maintaining production systems in Perl
• Experience with traditional or pre-modern Perl codebases, particularly Perl commonly written in the late 2000s through early 2010s
• Solid SQL and MySQL experience, including complex joins and query optimization.
• Experience maintaining and extending mature enterprise software rather than exclusively building greenfield applications.
• Strong understanding of Linux-based web application environments.
• Experience working with Apache, AWS, and traditional LAMP-style architectures.
• Excellent debugging, troubleshooting, and analytical problem-solving skills.
• Ability to understand complex business logic and large codebases before making architectural changes.
• Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted development tools without becoming dependent on them.
• Self-directed engineer who thrives with autonomy and ownership.

Nice to Have

• Experience with REST APIs and JSON-based service architectures.
• HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery experience.
• Experience with Vue, Svelte, React, Angular, or other modern front-end frameworks.
• Multi-tenant SaaS architecture experience.
• AWS infrastructure experience.

Why This Role

This is an opportunity to have meaningful ownership over the evolution of a successful enterprise software platform, not simply maintain legacy code. You'll work directly alongside the CTO to influence technical direction, modernize architecture, and solve interesting engineering challenges in a stable, profitable business with an established customer base.

For the right person, this role offers a clear path from senior individual contributor to technical leadership as the engineering team expands, while allowing you to make an immediate impact on a platform that powers mission-critical operations for some of the world's largest organizations.