Lead Software Development Engineer - AI Engineering

Office Depot•Austin, TX

13h•$115,000 - $160,000•Onsite

About The Position

This role is part of our AI Engineering team, building intelligent, cloud-native solutions that leverage emerging technologies, automation, and AI capabilities to enhance customer and associate experiences. The ideal candidate is excited by solving complex problems at scale and has experience integrating AI services, large language models (LLMs), or machine learning-driven capabilities into modern applications. The role of Lead Software Development Engineer is to design, build and maintain high quality technology solutions that deliver an exceptional customer experience. Working as an integral part of an Agile development team, this role will require close and continuous collaboration with the Product Owner, Business Analysts and fellow team members to translate user stories and functional requirements into resilient & secure technical designs which will be implemented as production-ready application code using Java and/or Golang. Additionally, this position is responsible for the design and integration of all required Cloud IaaS & PaaS services including compute, database, messaging, object storage etc.

Requirements

Advanced coding skills in Java and/or Golang, preferably with 7-10 years of development experience in one of these or similar language.
At least 3 years’ experience with at least one public Cloud platform.
2+ years working with containerized applications (i.e. Kubernetes / Docker etc.).
Prior experience operating across any of the major cloud ecosystems (Azure, GCP, AWS), with experience setting up services end-to-end and dealing with core networking practices.
Strong proficiency in NodeJS and Python.
Experience with SQL and document-based databases.
Ability to collaborate with non-technical stakeholders to clarify requirements.
Familiarity with logging tools (Dynatrace) for application monitoring.
Skilled in implementing robust software paradigms (circuit breakers, retries, fail-safe code).
Expertise in designing and integrating interactive services.
Java EE and/or Golang
Spring, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Vertx, GraphQL
Git
Ability to create unit tests, performance and integration tests (jUnit, jMeter/k6 & Postman/Newman)
Kubernetes and/or Docker
NoSQL DB (ie. Couchbase / MongoDB / Elastic)
RDBMS (ie. MySQL / PostgreSQL / MS SQL Server / Oracle)
HTTP
Linux/Unix basics
Natural problem solver
Ability to mentally model complex systems
Ability to break down complex problems into smaller less complex problems
Excellent English written and verbal communication skills
Team player
Detail orientated
Strong communicator

Nice To Haves

Experience working on AI-driven projects (e.g., integrating LLMs, building intelligent automation, or applying machine learning) is a plus.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, build and maintains high quality technology solutions that enhance and deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Collaborate with lead engineers to analyze and translate basic user stories and functional requirements into resilient & secure technical designs that align with best practices.
Proactively ensures application Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met by implementing, monitoring, and maintaining appropriate alerting tools and processes as required by each supported application.
Focuses on professional development through our wide array of learning opportunities for continued growth within the ODP team.