Lead Engineer

About the role

8th Light is a technology solutions consultancy seeking a Lead Engineer to partner with clients ranging from startups to large organizations. You will lead high-stakes consulting engagements, architect software solutions, and mentor team members while balancing technical considerations with product needs. This role requires a leader who can drive project direction, manage roadmaps, and foster collaborative, high-quality engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Make immediate contributions to projects and build trust with clients
• Lead architecture and software design discussions
• Collaborate on systems involving the full ML lifecycle
• Generate new solutions to technical and non-technical challenges
• Lead formal feedback conversations and retrospectives
• Ensure teams have a healthy, prioritized, and estimated backlog
• Manage high-level project roadmaps for large engagements
• Identify, mitigate, and resolve blockers to team progress

Required skills

• Java
• C#
• .NET
• Python
• TypeScript
• JavaScript
• React
• Go
• Ruby
• Scala
• R
• SQL
• Git
• CI/CD
• AI-assistive development

Nice to have

• Platform engineering
• Data Engineering
• Databricks
• RAG pipelines
• Vector search
• LangChain
• LlamaIndex
• CrewAI
• AutoGen
• n8n

Qualifications

• 7+ years of repeated success on a variety of projects

Benefits

• Wellness package
• L&D programme
• O'Reilly learning platform access
• Annual financial stipend for learning
• Coworking support
• 12 weeks of new parent leave

About the Company

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, 8th Light is a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. They build agentic products and platforms, focusing on durable results and a collaborative culture grounded in honesty.