Lead Software Engineer

Company Description

SquareTrade is the fastest growing company of its kind. We’re revolutionizing a $30b industry with service innovation and attention to customer satisfaction. We partner with some of the largest, most sophisticated retailers and carriers in the world (Amazon, Walmart, The Home Depot to name a few), consistently win industry awards, have received tens of thousands of 5-star reviews… and we’re just getting started. A member of the Allstate family, SquareTrade has headquarters in San Francisco and London. We are currently expanding in Europe and Asia Pacific, including Japan and Australia.

Job Description

If you're looking for an exciting, high-profile opportunity, then you've come to the right place! We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer who will take a hands-on leadership role in delivering innovative, scalable technology solutions that drive our customer experience and business growth. You will work across teams to drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and guide development practices that reflect the best in agile engineering and DevOps.

Our ideal candidate is self-motivated, technically strong, passionate about quality, and committed to continuous improvement. You’ll help shape our engineering culture and influence how we build, ship, and scale modern software systems.

Key Responsibilities

Technology & Architecture

• Design, code, test, and release new application features that contribute to our business growth while ensuring performance, scalability, and security.
• Develop resilient, cloud-native, containerized applications (preferably in AWS).
• Drive architectural evolution toward a microservices-based, distributed, event-driven platform supporting web-scale transactions.
• Leverage modern architectural practices such as domain-driven design, event streaming, and feature flags (canary deployments, circuit breakers, etc.).
• Build and maintain high-performance RESTful APIs using Spring/Spring Boot 2.x.
• Ensure full-stack ownership of features—from development through production monitoring and incident resolution.
• Work with technologies like Kafka, Postgres/MySQL, Docker, Kubernetes, and monitoring tools.

Agile Practices & Delivery

• Lead Agile development in a fast-paced Scrum environment, ensuring timely and high-quality delivery of software.
• Contribute to our DevOps culture by advocating for CI/CD, automated testing, and performance monitoring.
• Collaborate with product managers, business analysts, QA, and other engineers to translate requirements into reliable technical solutions.
• Conduct POCs and evaluate emerging technologies that can accelerate delivery or enhance developer experience.
• Participate in internal hackathons to promote innovation and cross-team collaboration.

Leadership & Mentorship

• Mentor and coach engineers, promoting professional growth and high team morale.
• Lead by example, promoting a quality-first, customer-focused engineering culture.
• Act as a technical advisor across teams and functions, helping unblock challenges and align technology decisions with business goals.
• Advocate for clean code, scalable systems, and best practices in design and development.
• Support operational excellence through clear documentation, monitoring, and incident response processes.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software development experience, including at least 2+ years in a lead or senior engineering role.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical projects and influence architecture.
• Expert-level skills in Java and modern frameworks such as Spring Boot.
• Strong experience with REST APIs, cloud platforms (AWS preferred), and relational databases (MySQL/Postgres).
• Experience with event-driven systems and stream processing (e.g., Kafka).
• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Comfortable working in Agile/Scrum environments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Additional Information

The Team:  http://www.squaretrade.com/leadership   

(Colorado Only) Pursuant to applicable law, SquareTrade estimates the possible base compensation for this role, if hired in Colorado, to be within the following range: $160K - $190K

SquareTrade is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for all employees. We celebrate diversity and encourage applications from all qualified individuals regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or ability status.  

Thank you for your interest in a career at SquareTrade. Throughout your job search, please be mindful of recruitment fraud.