Lead Software Engineer (API/Agentic)

Cricut • South Jordan, UT

7d • Onsite

About The Position

The Lead Software Engineer (API/Agentic) spends most of their time writing, reviewing, and shipping production backend code. The role uses agentic coding tools as a core part of the daily workflow, including AI-assisted code review, automated test generation, and AI-augmented development, while maintaining code quality, security, and human oversight.

The engineer designs and builds APIs and services end to end, contributes to architecture across C#/.NET and Python services, and defines versioned API contracts for iOS, Android, and desktop clients. They collaborate with Product Management, UX, and client engineers to move defined features from specification to release, raising feasibility and technical tradeoffs early. The role also focuses on performance and scalability, automated testing, CI/CD and deployment quality, progressive rollouts, production telemetry, service observability, SLOs, and on-call and incident response. The engineer participates in code reviews, shares knowledge, and evaluates backend, cloud, AI, and tooling technologies for practical improvements.

This is an in-office role at least 4–5 days per week. Relocation assistance is available. The position is contingent on successfully completing a criminal background check upon hire.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of professional backend software development experience, with deep production-level expertise in either C#/.NET (ASP.NET Core) or Python (FastAPI/Django).
• Experience designing and operating backend architectures at scale, including microservices or modular monoliths, event-driven and asynchronous messaging, and distributed systems patterns.
• Strong REST API design skills, including versioning, pagination, idempotency, error handling, and OpenAPI documentation.
• Strong experience with relational and NoSQL data stores, including schema design, indexing, and query tuning.
• Strong understanding of concurrency in the primary language, such as async/await and the Task Parallel Library in .NET or asyncio in Python.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP; Docker; and Kubernetes or equivalent orchestration.
• At least one year of hands-on practical use of modern AI engineering tools, such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Copilot; experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities into backend services where relevant, including agentic patterns and evaluation and latency/cost/reliability tradeoffs.
• Experience with architectural patterns such as Clean Architecture, Domain-Driven Design, CQRS, or hexagonal architecture.
• Strong debugging, profiling, and performance optimization skills using tools such as dotTrace/PerfView, py-spy/cProfile, and APM tracing.
• Experience with automated testing (unit, integration, contract, and load) and CI/CD pipelines such as GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or Jenkins.
• Experience instrumenting services with observability tools such as Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or Prometheus/Grafana.
• Clear written and in-person communication with engineering, product, and design.
• Ability to work effectively with Product Management, UX, and client teams and build agreement on scope and tradeoffs.
• Willingness to share knowledge and help other engineers grow.
• Curiosity about new tools and techniques, particularly AI-assisted development, and an ability to bring practical improvements to the team.
• Ability and willingness to work in-office at least 4–5 days per week.
• Successful completion of a criminal background check upon hire.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with both C# and Python.
• Experience working with client engineering teams (iOS, Android, Electron/Angular) to design APIs for mobile and desktop needs.

Responsibilities

• Write, review, and ship production backend code.
• Use agentic coding tools in daily development, including AI-assisted code review and automated test generation, while maintaining quality, security, and human oversight.
• Design and build APIs and services from technical approach and API contract through implementation, testing, and release.
• Contribute to backend architecture across C#/.NET and Python services, keeping systems modular, maintainable, and testable.
• Define clear, versioned API contracts for iOS, Android, and desktop client teams.
• Collaborate with Product Management, UX, and client engineers to deliver features and raise technical tradeoffs and feasibility concerns early.
• Optimize performance and scalability, including latency, throughput, database queries, caching, concurrency, and cloud cost.
• Write and maintain automated unit, integration, and contract tests.
• Drive CI/CD automation, release quality, and deployment processes for containerized cloud services.
• Use feature flags, progressive rollouts, and kill switches, and validate behavior with production telemetry before ramping up.
• Own service health through observability, SLOs, error rates, latency budgets, and defect trends; participate in on-call and incident response.
• Participate in code reviews and share knowledge with other engineers.
• Evaluate backend, cloud, AI, and tooling technologies and recommend useful improvements.

Benefits

• Competitive medical coverage.
• Dental coverage.
• Vision coverage.
• 401(k) match.
• Generous PTO.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Yearly lifestyle stipend to support wellness and passions.
• Exclusive employee discounts.
• Relocation assistance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior