Lead Software Engineer - Technical Track

Remote Lead Software Engineer role at UL Research Institutes (Digital Safety Research Institute), focused on technical leadership and full-stack systems for digital safety research.

Responsibilities

• Lead, define, and build full-stack software systems and platforms that support large-scale research, evaluation, and dissemination of safety insights
• Design and implement service boundaries, evolve data models, and define integration patterns across platforms
• Develop the pipelines and evaluation frameworks that feed into research workflows
• Set technical direction across projects by aligning architecture and data frameworks with DSRI research priorities and the broader AI evaluation ecosystem
• Iterate on complex, ambiguous, cross-cutting systems where requirements may not be fully understood
• Maintain consistent engineering practices and establish standards for AI-assisted engineering, including use of Claude Code for large refactors and greenfield work, plus adopting and adapting code from external organizations
• Create patterns and documentation to accelerate software engineering efforts
• Review and provide feedback when AI coding tools are used in dangerous, inappropriate, or inefficient ways
• Provide informal mentorship and feedback to junior engineers to support skill development and knowledge sharing
• Promote a collaborative, positive engineering environment, encouraging knowledge sharing and professional growth
• Support hiring, onboarding, and training for new software engineers to ensure smooth team integration
• Represent technical work within the organization and in selected external settings
• Contribute to and/or lead department-specific and cross-functional initiatives

Requirements

• Deep software engineering expertise across systems that support research and data-driven analysis, including at meaningful scale: React (production), Python services, async patterns, careful data handling, sensible API design, and PostgreSQL
• Experience designing and implementing complex data structures
• Working knowledge of the systems layer, including containers, deployment, and observability
• Architectural judgment from real experience, including the ability to explain trade-offs and recognize when not to introduce new services, abstractions, or dependencies
• Advanced use of AI coding tools, including integrating Claude Code (or similar) into substantial, non-trivial work: structuring context, decomposing problems, reviewing generated code, and recovering when tools fail
• Demonstrated technical leadership without formal authority, raising team quality through the work you deliver and how you work
• Clear, direct written communication and the ability to translate complex technical work for varied audiences (design documents, RFCs, post-mortems, asynchronous code reviews, and internal/external presentations)
• Genuine interest in AI safety, test and evaluation, or specific harm domains (including synthetic media and chatbot safety)
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or equivalent education and experience; Master’s preferred
• Minimum 8 years of software development experience, with a focus on platform security, and proficiency across multiple programming languages and frameworks
• Experience deploying multiple complex software products and understanding nuances of the software development life cycle

Technologies

• React
• Python
• Claude Code
• PostgreSQL

Salary

• USD $131,186.31 - $180,381.17 per year

Location

• Washington, DC (remote)