Lead Software Engineer – Java Architecture and Agentic AI

Location: Richardson, Texas

Work Model: Hybrid — two days per week onsite

Employment Type: Direct hire

Salary Range: $165,000 - $185,000/yr DOE

Work Authorization Requirement: Applicants must have permanent, unrestricted authorization to work in the United States. The employer cannot provide visa sponsorship now or in the future. Candidates whose continued employment authorization depends on OPT, CPT, H-1B, TN, or another temporary visa status cannot be considered.

The Opportunity

Our client, an established global enterprise software company, is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for major capabilities within a mature, business-critical software platform.

This is an individual-contributor position, not a people-management role. You will remain closely involved in architecture, design, coding, technical reviews, troubleshooting, and delivery while guiding engineering decisions across complex initiatives.

The ideal candidate combines deep Java application-development expertise with the ability to lead an AI-assisted engineering transformation. You will help establish development workflows in which AI agents support requirements analysis, planning, implementation, testing, and validation while experienced engineers maintain architectural control and critically evaluate the resulting work.

What You’ll Do

Lead Architecture and Delivery

• Provide technical direction for major application capabilities and cross-functional engineering initiatives.
• Design and develop scalable, secure, and maintainable Java application components.
• Lead architectural discussions, design reviews, technical investigations, and resolution of complex engineering challenges.
• Translate complex or ambiguous business requirements into architecture, specifications, delivery plans, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
• Establish reusable patterns and standards that improve consistency across the application.
• Balance immediate delivery needs with long-term architecture, maintainability, and product stability.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, and architectural constraints early in the development process.
• Lead root-cause analysis for critical production issues and drive permanent corrective actions.

Lead AI-Assisted Development Practices

• Define how AI tools and agents are incorporated into the software-development lifecycle.
• Design and improve workflows for AI-assisted requirements analysis, technical planning, implementation, testing, documentation, and validation.
• Develop or guide the creation of reusable agents, prompts, instructions, skills, plugins, guardrails, and tool integrations.
• Champion specification-driven development in which clear requirements and technical plans guide AI-assisted implementation.
• Establish review practices that ensure AI-generated code meets standards for correctness, security, performance, testing, and maintainability.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies based on measurable business and engineering value.
• Help define meaningful indicators for AI-assisted development quality, consistency, and productivity.

Influence and Mentor

• Mentor senior engineers and other technical contributors through architecture reviews, code reviews, and complex problem-solving.
• Influence technical direction across teams without relying on formal management authority.
• Partner with Product, QA, Architecture, Cloud, Security, Support, and Services teams.
• Build alignment among stakeholders with different priorities and technical perspectives.
• Promote collaboration and knowledge sharing within a mature product environment containing significant institutional and domain knowledge.
• Continue contributing directly to design and development rather than operating solely at a strategy or oversight level.

Required Qualifications

• Approximately 12 or more years of professional software-engineering experience.
• Deep experience designing and developing enterprise web applications using Java.
• Proven success leading architecture or major technical initiatives across teams.
• Strong hands-on expertise in:
• Java
• Spring Framework
• RESTful APIs and web services
• JUnit, Mockito, or comparable testing frameworks
• Experience building application features and product capabilities rather than working primarily in infrastructure, DevOps, or cloud-migration roles.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise architecture, software design patterns, scalability, maintainability, performance, testing, and production support.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions and create alignment without direct authority.
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or comparable platforms.
• Practical understanding of agentic AI, specification-driven development, prompt and context design, reusable agent instructions, and tool orchestration.
• Ability to recognize and correct flawed AI-generated designs, assumptions, implementations, and tests.
• Strong analytical, communication, mentoring, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Authorization to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hibernate or JPA experience.
• Angular, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, or other frontend-development experience.
• Experience with Selenium, Playwright, Cucumber, or comparable testing frameworks.
• AWS experience.
• Familiarity with Maven, Jenkins, Tomcat, and enterprise CI/CD practices.
• Test-Driven Development experience.
• Experience with Model Context Protocol tools or comparable agent-integration frameworks.
• Experience creating AI development standards, governance practices, quality metrics, or reusable development ecosystems.
• Personal, open-source, or entrepreneurial projects demonstrating meaningful agentic AI experimentation.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

What Will Make You Successful

You are a hands-on technical leader who earns influence through judgment, credibility, collaboration, and execution. You can establish architectural direction while remaining pragmatic about delivery.

You understand that AI will change how engineers produce software, but you also recognize that increasingly automated development requires stronger—not weaker—technical knowledge. You can guide AI-assisted work, detect when it is wrong, and ensure the final solution meets enterprise standards.

Location and Interview Requirements

This is a hybrid position requiring two days per week onsite in Richardson, Texas.

Candidates should currently live within a practical commuting distance of the Richardson office, generally within approximately 25 miles. The interview process includes an onsite, face-to-face interview.