Lead Software Engineer - Core Platform (Remote, Costa Rica)

About the role

Core Platform Engineering builds and operates shared capabilities used across AA Technology, including identity and access management, communication services, audit trails, API routing, client SDKs and developer tooling. The company is looking for a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to guide delivery across this portfolio, own a major platform area or several related services, and lead technical execution. The role combines architecture, implementation, production operations and team-level technical leadership, and is paid $50-60 USD per hour.

Key responsibilities

• Translate business, security, privacy and reliability requirements into platform architecture, API contracts, SDKs, event flows, policies and implementation plans.
• Lead quarterly and multi-quarter initiatives from discovery through design, coding, testing, rollout, monitoring and post-release support.
• Design, implement, review and troubleshoot TypeScript and Node.js services (NestJS preferred), REST, GraphQL and gRPC APIs, event-driven services, SDKs, middleware and developer tooling.
• Work with PostgreSQL, Kafka or comparable event platforms, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD pipelines, and establish strong testing practices.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for incidents, use logs, metrics, traces and dashboards to diagnose failures, and take part in the on-call rotation and after-hours releases.
• Own the quarterly and multi-quarter technical roadmap, decompose initiatives, coordinate a team of about four or more engineers, and distribute knowledge so the platform does not depend on a single expert.
• Plan safe migrations using backward compatibility, automated validation, feature flags, rollback procedures and production verification.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• At least 8 years of software-engineering experience, including substantial backend or platform-engineering responsibility.
• At least 3 years leading technical execution, collaborating with engineers or coordinating delivery for an engineering team.
• Demonstrated lead-level ownership across multiple modules, related services or one large platform subsystem.
• Experience leading high-risk migrations or platform changes through production.

Required skills

• TypeScript and JavaScript with production Node.js experience.
• REST, GraphQL or gRPC APIs and event-driven architecture.
• Identity and access concepts: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, JWTs, service accounts, roles and permissions.
• AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform or comparable IaC, and CI/CD systems.
• PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization and replication.