Software Engineer Lead (Hybrid)

First American•Santa Ana, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Join a team that puts its People First! As a member of First American’s family of companies, Data & Analytics is a national provider of property-centric information, analytics, risk management and valuation solutions. First American maintains and curates the industry’s largest property and ownership dataset with over 7 billion document images. Our major platforms and products include: DataTree®, FraudGuard®, RegsData™, TaxSource™ and ACI®. The First American Data & Analytics division boasts more than 20 patents and remains at the forefront of innovation - leveraging technology and data to deliver best-in-class decisioning solutions. Fueled by our industry-leading data and using our technology and proprietary process, our solutions provide lenders, real estate and title companies with actionable insights - enabling them to make better, increasingly automated, decisions. With offices in all major metropolitan areas, including California and New York, DNA teams work collaboratively from across the country. Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for eleven consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com. Build the platform that transforms how an entire industry creates its data. Millions of complex, unstructured documents flow through the American real estate industry every year — and the systems that turn them into usable data haven’t fundamentally changed in decades. First American Data & Analytics is building the AI-powered platform that replaces them — from the ground up. No legacy codebase. You’ll build from scratch. You’ll lead engineering delivery of the full platform — databases, APIs, operational tooling, AI-integrated workflows — collaborating with AI engineers on how models and infrastructure fit together, and partnering with operational teams to translate real workflows into system design. You own the engineering decisions — architecture, tooling, technical direction. Hands-on role: expect to spend the majority of your time building. Individual contributor with direct access to leadership.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience with progressive technical leadership.
Deep database design — relational schema architecture, migrations, indexing, SQL fluency. PostgreSQL preferred.
Full-stack development — strong backend (Python/FastAPI or equivalent), frontend (React, NextJS preferred, or equivalent). You’ll build the operational workbench frontend from scratch.
Clean, testable, production-grade code.
AI/ML integration experience — you build the production systems around models: serving endpoints, workflow orchestration, structured LLM output, confidence scoring. You don’t train models — you make them useful.
Document processing or OCR pipelines — layout analysis, structured text extraction, document understanding. The extraction pipeline starts with a layout parser.
Workflow system design — claim/lock patterns, status transitions, multi-stage review. Core to the operational workbench.
Cross-functional and distributed team leadership — you’ve driven delivery across time zones, functions, and skill sets.
You plan and manage delivery with PMs, BAs, and stakeholders.
Cloud platform experience — GCP preferred (Cloud SQL, Cloud Run, BigQuery). AWS or Azure transfers.
Comfortable coordinating with enterprise infrastructure, network, and security teams.
Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Agentic AI experience — designing or building multi-step AI workflows where models plan, execute, and evaluate autonomously.
UI component libraries and state management — MaterialUI (or similar design system), Redux, Zustand, or equivalent.
Containerization — Docker, Kubernetes, or similar.
Observability — OpenTelemetry, structured logging, drift detection.
LLM orchestration or RAG architecture — LangChain, vector databases, or similar.

Responsibilities

Lead technical delivery of the full-stack platform — frontend, backend, data infrastructure, AI-integrated workflows.
Set architecture patterns, connect the pieces, and ensure the team ships reliably.
Bring operational fluency to system design — partner with program leadership and operational teams to understand workflows, identify gaps, and translate that into software that transforms how work gets done.
Design and build the data layer — production schemas that track every field from raw document extraction through derivation and normalization, with full audit trail.
Configuration-driven, so changes propagate without code rewrites.
Integrate AI/ML workflows — structured LLM output, model serving, provenance tracking, evaluation infrastructure, and feedback loops that drive continuous improvement.