Lead Software Engineer

Appian•McLean, VA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Appian is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join their analytics team. This role involves building the reporting, charting, and AI-powered insights engine for the Appian platform. Responsibilities include working on interactive chart builders, drag-and-drop dashboards, and LLM-powered copilots. The position requires full-stack development, from database schema design to chart components and AI prompt pipelines. This role is based at the headquarters in McLean, Virginia, and requires employees to be in the office 5 days a week to foster a culture of in-person collaboration.

Requirements

B.S. in Computer Science or related (7+ years experience) or M.S. in Computer Science or related field (5+ years of experience)
Proven track record in high-volume, critical production service environments
Experience building interactive web UIs with TypeScript/React (or similar component frameworks)
Experience leveraging modern AI coding tools and agentic workflows to accelerate development, improve spec generation, and automate boilerplate tasks
Proven track record of collaborating with key contacts outside your immediate area of expertise and influencing team culture
Demonstrated history of guiding less experienced engineers with empathy and taking full ownership of complex deliverables
Strong Java fundamentals - Spring Framework, Hibernate/JPA, interface-first architecture, dependency injection

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience building or integrating LLM pipelines, prompt workflows, and AI copilot services into customer-facing products
Experience setting up custom agent harnesses, context configuration files (e.g., AGENTS.md, custom linters), or spec-driven execution workflows
Experience with data visualization libraries (Highcharts, D3, Chart.js) and state management patterns (Redux)
Strong UI/Full-Stack foundation using React, TypeScript, and functional UI principles
Familiarity with process mining, analytics, or business intelligence platforms

Responsibilities

Lead feature development and architectural decisions using spec-driven workflows while keeping the platform modern and scalable.
Leverage deep knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and design patterns to write software in a full-stack web and mobile environment.
Manage availability, latency, scalability, and efficiency by engineering reliability into software and systems.
Contribute heavily to software performance analysis and system tuning, ensuring our analytics engine and data layers operate at peak efficiency under high-volume workloads.
Design and implement features end-to-end across Liquibase/JPA schemas, Spring/Java services, SAIL system rules, and React/TypeScript components.
Build and extend LLM copilot pipelines, prompt workflows, and rich data visualization experiences like chart widgets and dashboard builders.
Conduct thorough design and code reviews, model best practices, and actively mentor engineers to increase team proficiency and development velocity.
Communicate complex designs clearly across teams and contribute high-quality technical content.