Lead Software Engineer

At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early‑stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer.

Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands‑on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients.

If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place.

Who You Are You’ve shown long‑term repeated success on a variety of projects, typically over the course of 7+ years. You can be the go‑to leader for any software development engagement. You have a broad and deep range of expertise that allows you to make an immediate impact on projects. In your previous experience, you have:

Successfully led high‑stakes consulting engagements from discovery to production

Built high‑quality, maintainable software collaboratively, incrementally, and through an approach tailored towards the unique needs of the clients you’ve served

Leveraged AI‑assistive development tools for tasks like scaffolding, refactoring, debugging, test generation, and documentation

Experience building or integrating AI/ML‑powered features into products or systems (e.g., recommendation engines, NLP models, computer vision, predictive analytics)

Used context‑appropriate automated testing to inform software design choices and catch bugs

Debugged and refactored pre‑existing code to incrementally improve it

Collaborated with teams using Git, MacOS/Linux, and CI/CD

Remedied architecture‑level concerns such as scalability, security, reliability, and performance

Brought together people from different functions and perspectives in forums that encourage idea sharing, collaboration, and problem solving

Made thoughtful recommendations and set direction in the face of ambiguity

Mentored and shared knowledge with colleagues

Actively sought out and effectively given feedback

Communicated empathically with stakeholders and colleagues

Collaboratively led stakeholders to balance technical considerations with product and user needs

What You’ll Do At 8th Light As a lead technologist on projects, you’ll work with a variety of clients, typically one to two in a year, through a variety of technologies and frameworks over the course of your career with us. You’ll lead more complicated projects, leading teams to do so. You’ll work with colleagues who share your passion for technology solutions. You’ll invest time developing your skills and sharing what you know. You’ll be responsible for:

Making immediate contributions to projects, rapidly building trust with clients

Working pragmatically to balance technology choices while delivering high‑quality work within deadlines

Leading architecture and software design discussions

Collaborating on systems that involve the full ML lifecycle from data ingestion and preprocessing, to model deployment, integration, and performance monitoring

Generating new potential solutions to challenges (technical and non‑technical) in partnership with team members and clients

Leading or initiating formal feedback conversations with teams and clients via retrospectives

Clearly articulating and documenting outcomes and driving forward action items

Contributing to the health of your team and 8th Light’s culture by modeling our Values

Ensuring your team has a healthy, prioritized, estimated backlog

Managing high‑level project roadmaps as the team lead for large engagements

Maintaining relationships with client technical leaders

Regular syncs with the client to provide status updates, and for identifying and evaluating risks and presenting potential solutions

Identifying, mitigating, and resolving blockers to team progress

Contributing to 8th Light by serving as a mentor, leading or designing workshops internally or for clients, representing 8th Light in the tech community, or supporting our hiring processes

Strongly Preferred Skills We work across many areas, and encourage anyone with the experience listed above to apply. We would particularly like to encourage applicants with experience in the following areas:

MLOps: including tools like LangChain for application development and managing the ML