Lead Software Development Engineer, Full Stack

About the role

At PitchBook, we are committed to continuous innovation and improvement across our platform and services. We foster a collaborative environment where creativity, teamwork, and technical excellence drive our success. Our culture emphasizes learning, mentorship, and exploration, encouraging employees to develop their skills and contribute meaningfully to the company's growth. As a Lead Software Development Engineer, you will be a key player in shaping our products, leading technical initiatives, and enhancing customer experiences through innovative solutions. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and maintain scalable, reliable software systems that support our data platform and analytics offerings.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead and mentor a small team of software engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Write production-level backend code daily, including services, data pipelines, and APIs, from initial prototypes to final deployment, ensuring high quality and performance.
• Design and develop new features for the platform, including data ingestion pipelines, search indexing strategies, and data processing workflows.
• Conduct thorough code reviews, architectural assessments, and design discussions to maintain high standards and consistency across the team's output.
• Quickly evaluate trade-offs between different technical approaches, balancing speed, scalability, and maintainability to meet project goals.
• Collaborate effectively with engineering managers, product managers, and other stakeholders to define technical requirements, scope, and priorities.
• Provide mentorship and technical guidance to team members, supporting their professional growth through code reviews, pair programming, and knowledge sharing.
• Identify and address technical debt that could impact system performance, reliability, or security, and develop strategies to reduce it over time.
• Take ownership of services and applications, ensuring their stability, scalability, and quality in production environments.
• Manage feature estimations, release planning, and communicate progress and timelines clearly to stakeholders.
• Optimize resource allocation and work distribution within the team to meet sprint goals and release deadlines.
• Ensure all releases adhere to PitchBook's standards for architecture, quality, security, and reliability.
• Leverage cloud technologies, such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS), to develop scalable, cost-effective software solutions.
• Promote best practices in microservices architecture, DevOps, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD).
• Support the company's vision and values by role modeling desired behaviors and fostering a positive, inclusive team environment.
• Participate in company initiatives, technical discussions, and cross-team projects to drive innovation and knowledge sharing.
• Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in software engineering, data pipelines, and distributed systems.
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of development processes, tooling, and documentation to enhance team productivity and quality.
• Collaborate with data engineers, product managers, and other technical teams to ensure seamless integration and delivery of platform features.
• Support and troubleshoot production issues, performing root cause analysis and implementing long-term fixes.
• Engage in capacity planning and performance tuning to ensure system responsiveness and scalability as data volumes grow.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
• Proven experience leading small, high-ownership engineering teams in a fast-paced environment.
• Over 7 years of backend software engineering experience, with a strong focus on Java in production systems.
• Extensive knowledge of distributed data pipelines and streaming systems, such as Kafka, with hands-on experience designing and maintaining them.
• Strong experience with Elasticsearch or similar search and indexing technologies, including designing scalable search solutions.
• Proficiency with relational databases, especially PostgreSQL, handling large data volumes and complex queries.
• Demonstrated experience building large-scale data ingestion, transformation, and processing systems, including entity resolution and data quality management.
• Familiarity with containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration tools such as Kubernetes in production environments.
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure providers, preferably Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Strong system design skills, including distributed systems architecture, data modeling, and API development.
• Enthusiasm for leveraging AI tools, such as GitHub Copilot, to improve productivity and code quality.
• Solid understanding of object-oriented design principles, Domain Driven Design, service-oriented architectures, and Agile methodologies.
• Must be authorized to work in the United States without requiring visa sponsorship now or in the future.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience working with data quality and entity resolution systems, especially in large-scale data environments.
• Knowledge of ITAR compliance, security standards, and data privacy regulations relevant to data platforms.
• Familiarity with the financial or data analytics industry, understanding the specific needs and challenges faced by clients.
• Experience with machine learning or AI applications relevant to data processing and analytics.
• Prior involvement in open-source projects or contributions to technical communities.

Skills & tools

• Java programming language
• Kafka for streaming data pipelines
• Elasticsearch for search and indexing solutions
• PostgreSQL or other relational databases for large-scale data storage
• Docker for containerization
• Kubernetes for orchestration and deployment
• Cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
• API design and development
• Distributed systems architecture and design
• Data pipelines, streaming systems, and data processing frameworks
• Version control systems, such as Git
• CI/CD tools and practices for automated testing and deployment

Practical notes

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future. The role is on-site at our Seattle office, and candidates should be prepared to work in this environment. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates are encouraged to demonstrate their experience with scalable systems, cloud technologies, and leadership in software engineering during the interview process.