Staff Engineer

Optomi, in partnership with a leading enterprise organization, is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to help modernize large-scale backend systems and cloud infrastructure. This highly technical individual-contributor role will lead architecture and engineering initiatives across distributed systems, microservices, APIs, and event-driven platforms.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader who can own complex systems from strategy through production, influence engineering teams and business stakeholders, and champion the adoption of AI-assisted development practices.

Location: Remote (United States)

Employment Type: Six-Month Contract-to-Hire

Work Arrangement: W2 Only

What the right candidate will enjoy:

• Leading high-impact modernization and legacy transformation initiatives
• Architecting scalable backend services, APIs, and cloud-native platforms
• Remaining hands-on while influencing long-term technical direction
• Solving complex challenges across enterprise business systems
• Mentoring experienced engineers and elevating engineering standards
• Exploring AI-assisted development tools and emerging technologies
• Working remotely within a high-performing, collaborative environment

Responsibilities:

• Architect and design scalable backend services, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems
• Lead legacy-system modernization and REST service transformation initiatives
• Establish cloud-native architecture, infrastructure patterns, and engineering standards
• Design event-driven solutions and reliable system integrations
• Own technical initiatives from stakeholder discovery and requirements gathering through production delivery
• Translate business processes and institutional knowledge into documented systems, workflows, and business logic
• Partner with technical and business stakeholders across enterprise functions
• Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies, including AI and retrieval-augmented generation platforms
• Champion AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code and other AI copilots
• Design and optimize CI/CD pipelines, database architecture, and operational processes
• Support authorization and security architecture, with Okta experience preferred
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leads through hands-on technical guidance
• Ensure solutions meet performance, scalability, security, and maintainability standards

Experience of the Right Candidate:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field
• Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer, or comparable technical leadership experience
• Proven ownership of large-scale, production-level backend systems
• Strong development experience with Java, Kotlin, or Python
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and microservices architecture
• Experience designing APIs and event-driven systems
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure
• Experience supporting systems after launch, including performance, reliability, and production support
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to engineering and business stakeholders
• Strong ownership mentality with the ability to explain individual technical decisions and measurable results
• Experience mentoring engineers and influencing teams without relying on formal authority
• Recent experience or meaningful hands-on experimentation with AI-assisted development tools

Preferred Experience:

• Leading enterprise legacy-modernization or cloud-transformation programs
• REST API rearchitecture
• Kubernetes and Docker
• Okta or comparable identity and authorization platforms
• AI, large language model, or retrieval-augmented generation platforms
• Enterprise systems supporting finance, legal, revenue, supply chain, or similar business functions
• Experience extracting and documenting institutional knowledge from legacy systems and stakeholders

Candidates must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. This is a W2-only opportunity, and C2C arrangements and current or future employment sponsorship cannot be supported.