Lead Backend Engineer – DPS Core & Data Engine Squad

CCC Intelligent Solutions•Chicago, IL

15h•$119,031 - $165,000

About The Position

CCC Intelligent Solutions is seeking a Lead Backend Engineer for the DPS Core & Data Engine Squad. The role focuses on database modernization, performance optimization, and strategic refactoring of mission-critical systems. The engineer will work on the system-of-record platform supporting internal DPS and external IES claims management experiences, which handle millions of transactions and billions of dollars in claims. This is a modernization engineering role involving the refactoring of complex stored procedures, extraction of domain logic into maintainable services, SQL performance optimization, and development of safe migration patterns that preserve business continuity. The position also involves evolving .NET codebases into clean, testable, domain-aligned modules as part of a multi-year transition from monolithic database logic to service-oriented architecture. Responsibilities are divided among database engineering and modernization (60%), legacy .NET modernization (30%), and operational excellence (10%).

Requirements

At least 8 years of professional software development experience in object-oriented languages, with C#/.NET required.
Expert-level SQL Server 2019 knowledge.
Advanced query optimization, including execution plans, index tuning, and query hints.
Experience developing and refactoring stored procedures, functions, and triggers.
Knowledge of database design and normalization.
Experience tuning performance at scale, including multi-million-row tables, complex joins, and aggregations.
Understanding of clustered, non-clustered, filtered, and columnstore indexing strategies.
Experience with SQL Agent jobs and automated workflow patterns.
Knowledge of transaction isolation levels, locking, and concurrency management.
Experience with C# and .NET Framework/.NET Core, including legacy and modern codebases.
Experience refactoring established systems while maintaining production stability.
Experience with SQL source control, including migrations and version control for schemas and stored procedures.

Nice To Haves

Practical experience with strangler fig, anti-corruption layer, and facade patterns.
Hands-on experience migrating logic from stored procedures to a service layer in production systems.
Familiarity with domain-driven design concepts, including bounded contexts, aggregates, and repositories.
Experience with Azure SQL Database and Azure DevOps.
Experience with observability tools such as Application Insights and SQL Profiler.
Experience with API design and versioning, including REST and OpenAPI/Swagger.
Experience with unit testing frameworks such as xUnit and NUnit, and test data builder patterns.
Experience with PowerShell for database scripting and automation.
Experience with microservices architecture and event-driven patterns.
Familiarity with Entity Framework Core, Dapper, or other ORMs, and judgment about when to use native SQL.

Responsibilities

Analyze, optimize, and decompose complex stored procedures into smaller, testable, well-documented units.
Tune queries, develop indexing strategies, analyze execution plans, and optimize data access patterns.
Design backward-compatible schema changes with safe rollout and rollback patterns.
Create facades, wrappers, and anti-corruption layers around stored procedures to support gradual extraction of business logic into services.
Refactor .NET Framework code supporting DPS workflows into maintainable, testable modules.
Implement strangler fig patterns to incrementally move logic from the database service layer while maintaining production stability.
Build domain-aligned modules and services with clear contracts to enable the Domain & Services Squad to extract capabilities.
Establish dependency injection, observability, and error-handling patterns in established .NET codebases.
Implement performance baselines, regression detection, and alerting for data-intensive workflows.
Participate in incident response for data- and performance-related production issues.
Create diagnostic tooling and runbooks to reduce time to resolution.
Collaborate with SRE/DevOps on deployment safety, including blue/green deployments, feature flags, and canary releases for schema changes.