Lead technical direction for Internal Tools, designing and building end-to-end front-end and back-end systems. Implement recommendation, ranking, and search capabilities, reduce technical debt with refactors, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and ensure secure admin interfaces and reusable tooling.
You're the technical leader for Internal Tools, owning architecture, quality, and engineering standards for the tools our internal teams rely on every day. This isn't a maintenance role. You'll bring recommendation, ranking, and other data-driven techniques to bear on how our tools work, and push for smarter automation wherever it saves people time.
We're looking for someone adept in AI-collaborative development who can define the right problems and balance human and technology intelligence to solve them thoughtfully. You'll work directly with the Engineering Manager, who brings product requirements and technical vision; you turn them into specs, system designs, and implementation plans. You're the team's top technical voice while also being a high-output IC. Expect roughly a 80/20 split between hands-on coding and technical leadership.
Responsibilities
- Own technical direction for Internal Tools, including front-end architecture and component/design system strategy, and turn product requirements into technical designs and engineering tickets
- Design and build new internal tools and admin features end-to-end, front-end through back-end
- Find opportunities to apply recommendation, ranking, and search techniques to our tools, partnering with data science and product to set priorities
- Drive down technical debt through targeted refactors and set engineering standards through design reviews
- Build reusable components and tooling that pay off beyond a single project
- Be the escalation point for deep debugging, and partner with security to keep admin interfaces locked down
- Help engineers grow through pairing, code review, and direct feedback; write the specs and docs that let the team build with confidence
Qualifications
- 5+ years building software, with a track record of shipping systems that scale
- Strong system design and architecture skills
- Extensive experience in JavaScript/TypeScript and Node.js
- Advanced, production-grade React skills
- Hands-on with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Elasticsearch, including performance tuning
- Experience building and scaling backend systems, ideally at a startup or small company
- Track record of mentoring engineers
What Sets You Apart
- Production experience with Next.js
- Experience with recommendation, ranking, or search systems
- Product-minded: you think about users, not just systems
- Background building internal tools or ops platforms
- Comfortable with cloud infrastructure, Docker/Kubernetes, and CI/CD
- Familiar with prompt engineering, fine-tuning, or shipping ML in production
Similar Jobs
Software • Consulting
The Full Stack Engineer will design, implement, and deliver full-stack features, focusing on scalable APIs and cloud-native solutions while collaborating with clients and engineering teams.
Top Skills:
Ai-Assisted DevelopmentAzure FunctionsAzure OpenaiCi/CdDockerGraphQLAzureNode.jsPostgresReactRedisRestTypescript
.png){kind=logo}
Artificial Intelligence • Marketing Tech • Software
As a Senior Full Stack Engineer, you'll build interactive customer experiences, manage backend architecture, write well-tested code, and ensure smooth production processes.
Top Skills:
AlgoliaJavaScriptPostgresRuby on RailsReactTypescript
AdTech • Marketing Tech
As a Senior Full Stack Engineer, you'll design APIs, develop UIs, optimize data pipelines, and deploy projects on AWS, ensuring top performance and code quality.
Top Skills:
AWSCloudwatchJavaScriptNode.jsReactRedux
What you need to know about the Chicago Tech Scene
With vibrant neighborhoods, great food and more affordable housing than either coast, Chicago might be the most liveable major tech hub. It is the birthplace of modern commodities and futures trading, a national hub for logistics and commerce, and home to the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. This diverse blend of industry influences has helped Chicago emerge as a major player in verticals like fintech, biotechnology, legal tech, e-commerce and logistics technology. It’s also a major hiring center for tech companies on both coasts.
Key Facts About Chicago Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 245,800; 5.2% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: McDonald’s, John Deere, Boeing, Morningstar
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, fintech, software, logistics technology
- Funding Landscape: $2.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Arch Venture Partners, MATH Venture Partners, Jump Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
