Lead Software Engineer

About this role

Your Future Evolves Here

Evolent partners with health plans and providers to achieve better outcomes for people with most complex and costly health conditions. Working across specialties and primary care, we seek to connect the pieces of fragmented health care system and ensure people get the same level of care and compassion we would want for our loved ones.

Evolent employees enjoy work/life balance, the flexibility to suit their work to their lives, and autonomy they need to get things done. We believe that people do their best work when they're supported to live their best lives, and when they feel welcome to bring their whole selves to work. That's one reason why diversity and inclusion are core to our business.

Join Evolent for the mission. Stay for the culture.

What You’ll Be Doing:

Position Summary
The Lead Software Engineer leads the design, development, and delivery of the web user experience for the Evolent Platform. This role defines the front-end architecture and technical strategy for a React and Next.js (TypeScript) application that consumes Pydantic AI agents over the AG-UI protocol and ensures the agent-to-human handoff is fast, accessible, secure, and auditable.
This individual provides technical leadership and mentorship to a team of front-end engineers, sets the standards others follow, and partners with architecture, agent, platform, design-system, and product teams to prioritize work and deliver on schedule. The role is expected to use approved AI-assisted tools to accelerate delivery and improve quality while remaining fully accountable for every result delivered.
AI-Assisted Engineering Expectations
Evolent engineers are expected to effectively leverage approved AI-assisted development and productivity tools (e.g., code assistants, copilots, automation agents, knowledge assistants, and analytics tools) to improve quality, efficiency, and innovation while maintaining accountability for all delivered work. These expectations span the full engineering lifecycle, not only code generation, including iterating with AI on solution design and architecture, evaluating alternatives, revising existing architecture, and producing design artifacts. Engineers remain responsible for validating outputs, ensuring solution quality, protecting sensitive information, and complying with security, privacy, regulatory, and Responsible AI standards.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership and Delivery

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of the agent-to-human handoff experience, ensuring alignment with business goals, product requirements, and regulatory decision timeframes.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the front-end engineering team, fostering a collaborative and productive development environment.

• Oversee the full front-end development lifecycle, from initial concept to production deployment and ongoing maintenance.

• Collaborate closely with product managers, UX designers, clinical stakeholders, and other engineers to prioritize work, set timelines, and deliver features on schedule.

Front-End Architecture and Standards

• Define and implement the React and Next.js architecture, including Server and Client Component boundaries, an opt-in caching standard, and read-your-writes behavior for decision forms.

• Establish the self-hosting standard for Next.js as containers on AKS, avoiding hosting-specific features that limit portability.

• Define the backend-for-frontend (BFF) pattern and the integration approach for .NET (C#) and Python (FastAPI) services, and Entra ID / OpenID Connect authentication.

• Partner with design-system owners on a technology-agnostic design token layer and a single Material-based theme across component libraries (e.g., KendoReact, MUI).

• Own npm supply-chain controls, including SBOM generation, pinned lockfiles, dependency allow-lists, and scanning through GitHub Actions, CodeQL, Dependabot, and JFrog Xray.

• Conduct code reviews and ensure adherence to coding standards, accessibility requirements, and security guidelines.

• Plan and lead framework and library upgrades, including annual Next.js major-version migrations.

Agentic User Experience

• Architect streaming user interfaces (SSE) that render agent narratives, tool calls, citations, and generative UI using the Vercel AI SDK, assistant-ui, and CopilotKit over the AG-UI protocol.

• Define the AG-UI event contract with the agent team, including shared state, frontend tools, and human-in-the-loop approval interrupts raised by Pydantic AI tools that require approval.

• Design human-in-the-loop patterns that let reviewers approve, modify, or override agent recommendations with structured rationale that supports the audit trail.

• Establish patterns for slow, interrupted, or failed agent calls, including resumable streams, retries, timeouts, and clear status for the reviewer.

• Lead delivery of data-heavy screens, including large sortable and filterable grids, PDF and document viewers, rich-text editors, and workflow wizards.

• Ensure WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA and Section 508 conformance across the application, including support for independent accessibility conformance reviews.

• Instrument the front end with OpenTelemetry to trace the agent-to-human handoff end to end.

AI-Enabled Delivery

• Utilize approved AI-assisted engineering tools, such as GitHub Copilot, to accelerate software development, testing, documentation, troubleshooting, and analysis activities.

• Evaluate and validate AI-generated outputs for correctness, security, maintainability, compliance, and business appropriateness.

• Continuously identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity and solution quality through AI-enabled workflows and automation.

• Contribute reusable prompts, skills, agents, engineering playbooks, and AI-assisted development patterns to benefit the broader engineering organization.

Governance and Compliance

• Follow enterprise policies governing AI usage,…