Lead Software Engineer

About this role

Job Title: Lead Software Engineer

Department: Product Development

About the Role:

Unite Us is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to provide senior technical leadership for our Platform Services team, the core APIs and services that power the entire Unite Us product suite. This is a senior individual-contributor role, not a people-management role: the Lead Engineer sets technical direction, raises the bar on engineering quality, and multiplies the team's effectiveness through mentorship, architecture, and hands-on delivery, rather than through direct reports. The Lead Engineer acts as the primary technical counterpart to the Senior Engineering Manager, translating team goals and long-term architectural context into concrete technical plans, and representing Platform Services' technical perspective in conversations with other engineering teams and stakeholders. This role requires deep experience with large-scale, object-oriented backend systems, APIs, and interoperability standards, along with the judgment to make and defend significant design and architecture decisions. A background in the healthcare or social care problem space is useful but not required.

What You'll Do:

• Own and evolve the technical architecture of Platform Services' core APIs and interoperability solutions, ensuring they remain scalable, secure, and maintainable as usage grows.

• Lead the design and implementation of complex, cross-cutting technical initiatives (e.g., FHIR-based interoperability, authentication frameworks such as SAML, SCIM, OAuth, and SMART), from proposal through delivery.

• Set technical standards and best practices for the team; review designs and code to maintain quality, consistency, and long-term maintainability across new and legacy codebases.

• Mentor and grow other engineers on the team, including pairing, technical coaching, and helping less experienced engineers reason through design trade-offs.

• Partner closely with the Senior Engineering Manager to translate team vision and business priorities into a concrete technical roadmap, and surface technical risks early.

• Represent Platform Services in cross-team technical discussions, building consensus with other technical leads on shared approaches and integration points.

• Break down ambiguous or large-scale problems into well-scoped technical plans that others on the team can execute against.

• Stay hands-on: contribute production code, especially for the highest-leverage or highest-risk parts of the system.

• Contribute to a positive, solution-focused, and collaborative team culture.

You’re a great fit for this role if:

• 7-8+ years of relevant experience as a software engineer, with a track record of increasing technical scope and ownership.

• Demonstrated experience leading the design and delivery of complex, large-scale, or cross-team technical initiatives.

• Deep understanding of CS fundamentals and of building and operating large-scale distributed backend systems and APIs.

• Strong track record of mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar of a team, without formal management authority.

• Experience making and communicating significant architecture and design trade-offs, and influencing technical direction beyond your own immediate work.

• Experience writing code that is clear, concise, testable, and easily understood by other engineers, and holding others to that same bar.

• Proficiency with modern web development technologies and techniques for building web services; strong back-end and API integration background.

• Experience with cloud-based SaaS development and CI/CD practices.

• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and multiple concurrent stakeholder demands.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related engineering field required; equivalent practical experience will be considered in lieu of a degree.

Preferred

• Experience with open standards-based authentication frameworks such as OAuth and SAML.

• Experience with Ruby or Ruby on Rails, Python, or with object-oriented and/or functional programming generally.

• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and monitoring systems like New Relic or DataDog.

• Experience working in Agile teams, particularly remotely.

• Experience with healthcare or social care technologies such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).

Our Mission:

Unite Us’ mission is to unlock the potential of every community. Our co-founders started Unite Us in 2013 to serve the people they served with. They witnessed firsthand the barriers and inefficiencies in trying to navigate health and social services, and set out to improve that experience for veterans and their families. Unite Us quickly expanded to serving all people who need connections to care across our country. Through Unite Us’ national network and software, community-based organizations, government agencies, and healthcare organizations are all connected to better collaborate to meet the needs of the individuals in their communities. We drive the collaboration to predict, deliver, and pay for services that impact whole-person health. If you want to do well and do good, join Unite Us.

Environmental Job Requirements and Working Conditions:

• This position is remote, U.S. based.

• This position may require 5% travel

• The target pay range for this role is: $160,000-$190,000. This salary range represents our target hiring range for this role. The proposed salary will be dependent on the candidate's skills, experience, and competencies, as well as location.

• All team members will be required to pass a background check which includes criminal, employment, and education verification

Benefits provided by Unite Us:

Medical, Dental, and Vision

We offer insurance to team members and eligible partners and dependents, including unlimited virtual mental health and acute medical visits.

Wellness

Mental health benefits, such as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and wellness…