Forward Deployed Engineer

Ethereum Technologies LLC; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Ethereum Technologies is seeking a Lead Developer to serve as the technical bridge between the Forward Deployed Engineer and our offshore delivery team. You will translate high-level architectural direction into actionable work, maintain code quality, and ensure compliance with Charter standards while contributing hands-on backend work in Python (FastAPI/Flask) and REST API design.

The role blends technical ownership, delivery coordination, and leadership through influence rather than formal

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on backend Python with FastAPI/Flask.
• Experience leading offshore development efforts.
• Familiarity with OpenAPI and contract-first API design.

Responsibilities

• Translate architectural decisions into detailed specs and user stories for offshore teams.
• Be primary escalation point for offshore developers on blockers.
• Participate in sprint ceremonies and coordinate with FDE on priorities and direction.
• Lead technical decisions, code reviews, testing, and production readiness.

Skills

Python

FastAPI/Flask

Async programming

Pydantic

REST API design

Technical leadership

Code reviews

OpenAPI 3.0

CI/CD

Production support

Job description

US Citizen, Green Card, H-1B, OPT-EAD, CPT, Other

This Lead Developer serves as the technical bridge between our Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)and the offshore development team. The role translates high-level architectural direction and product requirements into actionable, well-scoped work for offshore delivery, while maintaining code quality, architectural compliance, and alignment with Charter engineering standards.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, aligned to the Charter Software Engineering Team Lead model. Roughly half the time is spent contributing code directly; the rest is spent on technical ownership, delivery coordination, and enabling the offshore team. The lead leads through technical context and influence, not formal management authority.

The core of this role is a strong hands-on technical engineer with real leadership experience. The two things that matter most are (1) demonstrated technical leadership of a development team and (2)deep backend Python skills (FastAPI/Flask, async, Pydantic, REST API design).

• Translate FDE-defined architectural decisions, designs, and product requirements into detailed technical specifications and user stories consumable by the offshore development team
• Serve as the primary escalation point for offshore developers encountering technical blockers
• Participate in sprint ceremonies (planning, daily standups, reviews) with the offshore team, bridging time zone gaps with asynchronous documentation and recorded walkthroughs
• Coordinate with the FDE on priorities, scope changes, and technical direction; relay context and decisions to the offshore team

Technical Ownership

• Own day-to-day technical decisions for the team's area: implementation approach, internal design,refactoring, and production support strategy
• Apply architectural standards in practice; push back when direction does not fit real-worldconstraints
• Represent the team in architecture and cross-team technical conversations
• Set expectations for code review, testing, documentation, and production readiness
• Conduct code reviews for all offshore-produced work, ensuring compliance with Charter codingstandards, constraints, and CI/CD pipeline requirements
• Maintain and enforce adherence to contract-first API design (OpenAPI 3.0+ specs authored beforeimplementation)
• Keep technical debt visible and advocate for engineering time to address it
• Lead the technical response to incidents — debugging, root cause analysis, and durable fixes
• Own operational health for the team's area: monitoring, alerting, on-call health, and runbooks
• Drive release readiness and track post-release outcomes with the Product Owner and customers

We are an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, citizenship/ immigration status, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.