Lead Software Development Engineer, Full Stack

PitchBook Data; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Additional medical wellness incentives

Paid sabbatical program after four years

Paid family and paternity leave

Vacation days, sick days, volunteer days

Employee stock program

Annual educational stipend

Job summary

PitchBook Data in Seattle, Washington is seeking a Lead Software Development Engineer, Full Stack. You will design and drive systems that handle billions of records for our customer-facing products.

This hands-on role involves managing a team while also contributing directly by writing production-grade code, mentoring junior engineers, and ensuring high design quality in a collaborative work environment. The role demands strong backend experience and the ability to adapt quickly to new challenges.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend software engineering experience, especially in Java.
• Experience leading a technical team without large organizational support.
• Strong background in data ingestion and transformation systems.

Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a team of software engineers.
• Write production-grade backend code on a daily basis.
• Lead design for new platform capabilities and maintain code quality.

Skills

Java

Distributed data pipelines

Kafka

Elasticsearch

PostgreSQL

Docker

Kubernetes

AI productivity tools

Domain-Driven Design

Agile methodologies

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

GCP

AWS

Job description

Lead Software Development Engineer, Full Stack

Seattle, Washington, United States

At PitchBook, a Morningstar company, we are always looking forward. We continue to innovate, evolve, and invest in ourselves to bring out the best in everyone. We’re deeply collaborative and thrive on the excitement, energy, and fun that reverberates throughout the company.

Our extensive learning programs and mentorship opportunities help us create a culture of curiosity that pushes us to always find new solutions and better ways of doing things. The combination of a rapidly evolving industry and our high ambitions means there’s going to be some ambiguity along the way, but we excel when we challenge ourselves. We’re willing to take risks, fail fast, and do it all over again in the pursuit of excellence.

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.

About the Role

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, search indexing strategies
• Own the technical quality of the team's output: code review, architecture decisions, performance, reliability, 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 ultimately be 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 and features meet PB 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 dev‑ops
• Support the vision and values of the company through role modeling and encouraging desired behaviors
• Participate in various company initiatives and projects as requested

Skills and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a similar field
• Track record of technical leadership in a small, high‑ownership team — without needing a large org around you to get things done
• 7+ years of backend software engineering, predominantly in Java on production systems at scale
• 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
• Cloud infrastructure experience (GCP preferred, AWS acceptable)
• 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
• Must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future

Benefits + Compensation at PitchBook

Physical Health

• 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
• Dependent Care FSA
• Employee referral bonus program
• Quarterly team building events
• Shared ownership employee stock program
• Monthly transportation stipend

Compensation

• Annual base salary: $190,000‑$230,000
• Target annual bonus percentage: 15%

Working Conditions

This role is expected to be in the office 5 days a week. The job conditions are a standard office setting. Employees use PC and phone on an ongoing basis. Limited corporate travel may be required to remote offices or other business meetings and events.

After receiving an offer, we encourage you to apply if you may be a good candidate for this or other roles at PitchBook.

As set forth in PitchBook Data’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.