Staff Software Engineer – Contract to Hire – Fully Remote

Oliver James Group; New York (NY); Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Oliver James Group is seeking a Staff Software Engineer focused on Insurance to drive the architectural direction of a major platform. The role blends hands-on coding with strategic leadership across design decisions, APIs, and integrations to deliver scalable solutions.

You will collaborate with product and architecture teams to set standards, improve reliability, and advance engineering practices while mentoring engineers across multiple teams.

Qualifications

• Experience designing cloud-native platforms and distributed systems.
• Ability to translate business requirements into scalable solutions.
• Mentor engineers and establish engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across design, development, and delivery of a cloud-native platform.
• Define architecture and technical direction across applications, APIs, integrations, data, security, reliability, and scalability.
• Lead technical design discussions and pragmatic trade-offs.
• Remain hands-on with development while guiding other engineers.
• Establish engineering best practices across architecture, code quality, CI/CD, observability, and production reliability.
• Identify and mitigate technical and architectural risks before delivery.
• Mentor senior engineers and raise technical capability across the organization.

Skills

Cloud-native

Distributed systems

Architecture

APIs

Security

Reliability

CI/CD

Observability

Mentoring

Engineering practices

Job description

Staff Software Engineer – Insurance – Contract to Hire – Fully Remote

We’re currently partnering with a leading life insurance organization on their search for a Staff Software Engineer to provide technical leadership for a major new platform build.

This isn’t simply a hands-on development role. You’ll help define the architecture and technical direction of the platform, while remaining close to the code and providing technical leadership across the wider engineering team.

You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, and Architecture teams to translate business requirements into scalable solutions, while helping establish the engineering standards and practices that will support the platform long term.

Key Responsibilities Include

• Providing hands-on technical leadership across the design, development, and delivery of a cloud-native platform.
• Defining architecture and technical direction across applications, APIs, integrations, data, security, reliability, and scalability.
• Leading technical design discussions and making pragmatic decisions around complex engineering trade-offs.
• Remaining hands-on with development while guiding other engineers and influencing technical decisions across teams.
• Establishing engineering best practices across architecture, code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, and production reliability.
• Identifying and mitigating technical and architectural risks before they impact delivery.
• Mentoring senior engineers and helping raise technical capability across the wider organization.

What We’re Looking For

• We’re looking for a highly experienced, hands-on Staff Engineer who enjoys having genuine influence over how a platform is designed and built. You should be comfortable setting technical direction while still getting into the detail and solving complex engineering problems yourself.
• You’ll ideally have strong experience designing and building cloud-native platforms and distributed systems, with a background across modern application architecture, APIs, integrations, cloud technologies, security, and reliability.
• Just as importantly, you’ll need to be comfortable influencing technical direction across multiple teams and working through complex trade-offs. This is a role for someone who can bring clarity to ambiguity and help teams make better technical decisions.
• You’ll also need to be comfortable working with distributed engineering teams, including internal engineers, contractors, and vendors, while mentoring engineers and helping establish strong engineering practices.
• Experience within Life Insurance, Insurance, Financial Services, or another regulated environment is desirable.

Why This Role Is Different

You’re joining at the beginning of a major new platform capability, giving you the opportunity to shape the architecture, engineering practices, and technical direction from the ground up.

This is a genuine Staff-level opportunity for someone who wants to remain hands-on technically while having a broader influence across engineering teams and the platform as a whole.