Lead Software Engineer

CAS uses intuitive technology, unparalleled scientific content and unmatched human expertise to help companies create groundbreaking innovations that benefit the world. As the scientific information solutions division of the American Chemical Society, CAS manages the largest curated reservoir of scientific knowledge, and for 114 years, has helped innovators mine, assess and apply that information to keep businesses thriving. The CAS team is global, diverse, endlessly curious and strives to make scientific insights accessible to innovators worldwide.

CAS is currently seeking a Lead Software Engineer. This position will be located in our headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

Division and Department Overview

The Technology division is responsible for the direction, planning, coordination, and management of the organization s information resources. Technology builds, enhances, and maintains online products and scientific databases; creates and maintains various applications to support research efforts of scientists, information professionals, patent examiners, corporations, and law firms worldwide. The division also provides resources to employees, technical support for products, manages state of the art onsite data center, creates security policies and sets internal standards for best practices in Technology project management.

Position Accountabilities

The Product Technical Lead is the Technology Owner for a key revenue generating product. The Product Technical Lead defines and drives technical strategy and architectural vision for the product. They design appropriate solutions and recommend alternative approaches, when necessary. The Product Tech Lead must be passionately committed to product success. The Product Technical Lead is responsible for the overall strategy for the technical stack.

The Product Technical Lead helps refine the what and owns the how. The Product Technical Lead works with the product manager and delivery lead on the when. The Product Technical Lead will understand an ever-evolving technical environment both within and outside of CAS to identify the optimal technical direction.

Work Planning

• Partner with the product manager and delivery lead to build and present the roadmap, representing feasibility and team capacity
• Partner with the product manager and product owner to realize the product vision, set realistic feature goals and identify technical risks and dependencies
• Understand the current technical capabilities and limitations and recommend innovative approaches to reduce the overhead of developing new features and maintaining existing features.
• Assist the software engineers in estimating the time and resources needed for new requirements.
• Analyze requirements for feasibility with regards to testing and implementation.

Design

• Own technical architecture for the product
• Minimize technical complexity of product implementation
• Leverage platform architectures and shared services to improve quality and speed to market
• Lead the development team in thin-slicing work to deliver meaningful product increments as frequently as possible.
• Make technical debt visible and counsel the product manager on strategic prioritization
• Share progress made by the product team and value delivered
• Recommend new or better software technologies and procedures to keep up with the technology advancements.
• Provide inputs to data modeling based on the project understanding.
• Review design documents and test case documents written by other software engineers.
• Evaluate new project and business requirements, feasibility and design new UI (User Interface) Screens by creating mockups and proof of concepts.
• Write up design documents, flowcharts and review them with architects and product managers
• Evaluate and prioritize/categorize new requirements into phases to help project management plan the schedule for release.

Coding

• Perform code reviews with developers and amend any changes required.
• Develop test plans for quality testing of the new features and functionality.
• Oversee unit tests of the new functionality and make sure the requirements are met.
• Ensure the code written by other developers meets the quality and performance standards.
• Code alongside his team when necessary while guiding the team to grow technically and professionally.

Deployment & Knowledge Management

• Develop end to end deep understanding of the product
• Write technical documents and programming comments so other software engineers can understand what was implemented.
• Write migration documents with instructions explaining the process for customers running on previous versions of the product.
• Assist the Solution Platform by providing direction, answering questions on the deployment process, steps, and any errors if encountered.
• Handle deployments and foresee issues and review steps and tasks performed by the solution delivery team.
• Assist production support team by providing direction, answering questions on application functionality, and implementing fixes.
• Write deployment document for production support team on how to install the new source code.
• Perform document review with software engineers and architects.
• Share progress made by the product team and value delivered.

Education

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent, relevant experience.

Technical & Leadership Experience

• Minimum of 10+ years of experience in software development.
• Experience in commercial software development preferred.
• Experience with IBM BAL, JCL, and Mainframe Architecture.
• Experience with Solaris Grid technologies preferred.
• Experience with C, C++, and Perl
• Excellent knowledge of application development and technology life cycles.
• Experience motivating team members for greater engagement, productivity and quality.
• Ability to make Tactical Decisions with Strategic outcomes in mind.
• Proven experience in communicating with management at all levels; ability to regularly communicate progress to appropriate stakeholders.
• Ability to work in a rapidly changing, high growth environment.
• Ability to understand and work with strong attention to the details.
• Experience in working at & supporting a software development company with customer facing applications.
• Mentor team members in project teams.
• Conduct technical interviews for hiring new talent.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

CAS offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package, including a generous vacation plan, medical, dental, vision insurance plans, and employee savings and retirement plans. Candidates for this position must be authorized to work in the United States and not require work authorization sponsorship by our company for this position now or in the future. EEO/Minority/Female/Disabled/Veteran