Tech Lead

We are seeking a hands-on Tech Lead for a contract position to act as the technical authority for one or more strategic initiatives. This 6+ month role is based in Plano, Texas. The Tech Lead will define architecture, service contracts, and technical roadmaps while providing strong engineering leadership. The short-term emphasis is technical discovery, solution design, and laying the foundation for downstream delivery and team scaling.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the lead developer and technical authority for the initiative(s).
• Design resilient, cloud-native system architectures and define technical roadmaps.
• Decompose ambiguous problem spaces into clear, actionable technical plans.
• Define, document, and negotiate service and API contracts with partner teams.
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for security, resiliency, and maintainability.
• Identify technical dependencies, risks, sequencing, and trade-offs across backend and cloud systems.
• Promote a "Security First" mindset, emphasizing the constant need to consider security with every change.
• Remain heavily hands-on in backend development (~60-70% focus) using TypeScript and Node.js while stepping in to support frontend work (~30-40%) using React and TypeScript when needed.
• Architect and build services using TypeScript and Node.js, with potential to support applications written in Java.
• Review code and enforce engineering best practices and quality standards across both frontend and backend repositories.
• Support complex technical problem-solving across the stack.
• Work closely with product, partner teams, and stakeholders to shape scope and priorities.
• Help determine which initiative to start first based on technical readiness and risk.
• Inform decisions on future team composition and required skillsets.
• Work within a single cross-functional team supporting multiple initiatives and contribute to APIs that are primarily internal-facing, with some UI components potentially external-facing.
• Influence when and how additional engineers are added as scope and priorities become clearer.

Qualifications

• Required

• Strong, expert-level proficiency in TypeScript across the software stack.

• Deep experience building APIs and services using TypeScript and Node.js.

• Working experience with React for occasional UI enhancements and integration.

• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud infrastructure services, including Lambda, ECS, and S3.

• Practical experience with DynamoDB.

• Solid understanding of common authentication and authorization patterns, including JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) and OAuth.

• Preferred

• Support-level proficiency with Java and/or Angular.

• Experience with GraphQL, primarily as a consumer but potentially as a producer of a sub-graph.

• Experience with cross-language migrations (e.g., Java to TypeScript/Node.js or vice versa).

• Experience with additional NoSQL or SQL databases.

• Experience with Kong, Lambda Authorizers, and/or Glue.

• Experience with Security and Monitoring tools.

• Experience with GitHub Actions.