Lead Software Development Engineer
About the same as the median for Lead & Executive Engineering roles
PitchBook's Lead Software Development Engineer on the Frontier Data Platform team is a senior technical leader and prolific individual contributor. You will design, build, and own the systems that ingest, correlate, enrich, and surface billions of records across PitchBook's customer-facing products — from raw scraped data through to search-ready, AI-augmented intelligence.
This is a hands-on role. You will write production code every day, prototype rapidly when the problem demands it, and lead by example rather than by delegation. You will be the technical north star for a small, high-ownership engineering team — setting the bar for design quality, system thinking, and engineering craft.
Primary Job Responsibilities:
Manage, mentor, and lead a small team of software engineers
Evangelize better technical practices, and continually raise the bar for technical excellence across the company
Write production-grade backend code daily — services, pipelines, APIs — from prototype to ship
Lead system design for new platform capabilities: ingestion pipelines, entity resolution, enrichment workflows, and search indexing strategies
Own the technical quality of the team's output: code review, architecture decisions, performance, reliability, and observability
Assess tradeoffs quickly and pivot when needed — whether that's a proof-of-concept in a day or a multi-week pipeline refactor
Collaborate directly with the EM, product, and partner teams on requirements and technical direction
Mentor engineers on the team through code, design discussions, and direct pairing
Identify and drive down technical debt that meaningfully limits velocity or reliability
Own services and applications and related infrastructure, and be ultimately responsible for the services' quality, stability, reliability, and performance in production
Own estimations of Features and Releases in the Team and can explain them to peer functions and stakeholders
Responsible for optimal engineering resources allocation and work distribution within the Team to meet the sprint and release goals
Ensure that Releases & Features meet PitchBook Engineering (Architecture, Quality, Reliability, etc.) standards and guidelines
Use cloud technology to create robust and scalable software systems
Help establish best practices around software development, microservices, and DevOps
Support the vision and values of the company through role modeling and encouraging desired behaviors
Participate in various company initiatives and projects as requested
Basic Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems
7+ years of backend software engineering, in Java on production systems at scale
5+ years of cloud infrastructure experience (GCP preferred, AWS acceptable)
Must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future
Must be able to work onsite in our Seattle office
Preferred Qualifications:
Track record of technical leadership in a small, high-ownership team — without needing a large org around you to get things done
Deep experience with distributed data pipelines and streaming systems — Kafka or equivalent
Strong hands-on experience with Elasticsearch or comparable search/indexing platforms
Solid PostgreSQL or relational DB expertise at meaningful data volumes
Experience with large-scale data ingestion, transformation, or enrichment systems — entity resolution, deduplication, or data quality pipelines are a strong plus
Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) in production
Strong system design instincts: distributed systems, data modeling, API design, and fault tolerance
Experienced and enthusiastic about using AI for productivity and efficiency (GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent)
Solid object-oriented design experience including: Domain Driven Design methodology, experience working with service-oriented architectures and Distributed Systems, and an undying belief in the power of testing, CI/CD, and Agile
Benefits + Compensation at PitchBook:
Physical Health
Comprehensive health benefits
Additional medical wellness incentives
STD, LTD, AD&D, and life insurance
Emotional Health
Paid sabbatical program after four years
Paid family and paternity leave
Annual educational stipend
Ability to apply for tuition reimbursement
CFA exam stipend
Robust training programs on industry and soft skills
Employee assistance program
Generous allotment of vacation days, sick days, and volunteer days
Social Health
Matching gifts program
Employee resource groups
Subsidized emergency childcare
Dependent Care FSA
Company-wide events
Employee referral bonus program
Quarterly team building events
Financial Health
401k match
Shared ownership employee stock program
Monthly transportation stipend
*Please be aware the above PitchBook benefit and perk offerings are subject to corresponding plan and policy documents and may change during the course of your employment.
Compensation
Annual base salary: $190,000-$230,000
Target annual bonus percentage: 15%