Lead Software Engineer (Hybrid)

Summary / Objective

The Lead Software Engineer will play a pivotal role owning delivery and operational excellence for our DNS-anchored identity platform for AI agents. This role combines deep hands-on coding with team leadership, guiding Sr. Engineers and DevOps/SREs, driving day-to-day execution, and taking full ownership of production. Working alongside a Principal Architect who sets the technical vision, you will translate that vision into reliable, running software while shaping team processes, mentoring teammates, and building the foundation for sustainable growth at a critical, well-funded stage of innovation where your technical and organizational decisions will define how we scale.

This role reports to the VP, Engineering & Technical Architect and works closely with the Principal Architect.

What You'll Do

• Act as lead developer — hands-on designing, building, and shipping features across the stack, from backend services (Go, Python, TypeScript/Node) to front-end interfaces (React) to cloud infrastructure (AWS)
• Own execution of the engineering roadmap. Break down ambiguous problems into well-scoped work, manage delivery cadence, identify risks early, and ensure the team ships incrementally and reliably
• Collaborate with the Principal Architect to translate architectural vision into production-ready implementations. Contribute to architectural decisions and own the path from design to deployed, running software
• Collaborate closely with Product and Design to turn complex identity, DNS, and AI agent concepts into clear technical plans and intuitive product experiences
• Actively participate in and drive code reviews to maintain quality, share knowledge, and ensure consistency across the codebase
• Lead and mentor a team of Sr. Software Engineers and DevOps/SRE engineers — providing technical direction, career mentorship, regular 1:1s to support technical initiatives
• Raise the technical bar across the engineering organization through mentoring, pairing, and establishing engineering standards and best practices
• Partner with the VP of Engineering to define development processes, team culture, and hiring priorities
• Be a key voice in recruiting — helping identify, evaluate, and close engineering talent
• Own production operations for the platform — uptime, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and post-incident review
• Drive operational maturity across the team: observability, runbooks, on-call rotations, SLOs, and capacity planning
• Ensure security hardening, key rotation, certificate lifecycle management, and compliance readiness are built into the platform from day one — not bolted on later
• Coordinate cross-team technical integration, including with the Cadena cryptographic team, external service providers, and Identity Digital's broader engineering organization
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies, frameworks, and patterns where they deliver clear value — particularly in AI/ML tooling, agent frameworks, and identity/security infrastructure
• Actively models and promotes Identity Digital’s core values through day-to-day interactions, behaviors, and decision-making
• Other duties as assigned

Who You Are / What You Bring

• 8+ years of experience building and shipping production software, with at least 2 years in a technical lead, staff engineer, or engineering manager role
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a relevant field — or equivalent experience
• Experience leading engineers - you've run 1:1s, provided technical mentorship, and helped people grow
• Comfortable leading through technical credibility and influence as much as positional authority