Lead Software Engineer

About Emerald Emerald’s talented and experienced teams grow our customers’ businesses 365 days a year with products that create connections, deliver content, and drive commerce. We produce over 140 annual events, create and deliver content through print and digital channels, and power commerce through our seamlessly integrated in-person and digital platforms and channels. For more information, please visit http://www.emeraldx.com. Emerald is seeking an experienced Lead Software Engineer with strong development expertise, architectural leadership, and a passion for AI-enabled engineering to lead a team building Enterprise B2B solutions. This role is critical to driving high technical standards, shaping scalable system architectures, and accelerating delivery through modern development practices and responsible AI adoption. You will balance people leadership with technical ownership, setting clear expectations for code quality, design, and operational excellence. In partnership with product and platform teams, you will guide architecture decisions, modernize legacy systems, and champion the effective use of AI tools and patterns to improve developer productivity, code quality, and time-to-value. What You'll Do: Set and uphold quality standards for the team, including coding standards, architectural guidelines, testing expectations, and operational best practices Provide technical and architectural leadership, guiding system design, component boundaries, integration strategies, and long-term platform evolution Drive adoption of software design and architectural patterns, such as component-based architectures, event-driven systems, API-first design, and contract-driven development Establish and evolve development workflows and quality gates, including code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and release readiness criteria Lead AI adoption within the engineering organization, including: Identifying opportunities to leverage AI for code generation, testing, refactoring, and documentation Encouraging responsible and effective use of AI tools to improve developer productivity and quality Partnering with leadership to align AI usage with security, compliance, and engineering standards Mentor and develop engineers in system design, problem decomposition, and modern development practices Remain hands-on when appropriate, contributing to design reviews, complex implementations, and legacy refactoring efforts Lead legacy modernization initiatives, balancing technical debt reduction with feature delivery and business needs Collaborate closely with Product, Design, DevOps, and other stakeholders to ensure architectural decisions support scalability, reliability, and business outcomes About You: 12+ years of experience in development, with at least 3 years in a leadership role Proven ability to lead engineering teams in an Enterprise SaaS environment Strong expertise in React, Node.js, and modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks Ability to work independently and organize tasks and priorities Deep understanding of software engineering principles: SOLID, DRY, KISS, separation of concerns Domain-driven design (DDD) concepts Proven experience designing and implementing scalable system architectures in Enterprise SaaS environments Demonstrated knowledge of development and architectural patterns, such as: Component-based architectures Event-driven systems API-first and contract-driven development Experience leading legacy modernization efforts, including migrations to modern stacks and frameworks Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, deployment strategies, and release automation Strong knowledge of testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end, contract testing) Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native architectures Familiarity with AWS architecture patterns (networking, security, scaling) Experience building or maintaining design systems and shared component libraries About Emerald At Emerald, we strive to foster a diverse and inclusive community. We actively recruit and champion candidates who bring new perspectives from varied professional backgrounds and experiences, and we are intentional about ensuring a positive hiring experience for everyone. Our job postings don’t contain experience inflation, and most don’t require college degrees. Instead, they’re crafted to focus on outcomes and transferable experiences that are assessed in a structured interview process carried out by trained hiring teams. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Target Compensation: $130,000 - $150,000 Please note that this range reflects a reasonable estimate of the target compensation for this position. This range may ultimately vary based on a candidate’s qualifications and may be higher where required by applicable law. We offer a competitive benefits package designed to strengthen our employees’ physical and mental health, including unlimited vacation for exempt employees, flexible working locations, 401(k) plan with a company match, medical/dental/vision coverage with inclusive provisions including transgender services and fertility benefits, parental and caregiver leave, dependent, commuter and FSA benefits, professional development programs like Toastmasters, and mental wellness tools. If you need accommodation in our application process or have questions about our posted salary range, please email our Talent Acquisition team at [email protected].