Technical & Program Lead, Contract

Smith & Connors, LLC; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 131,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

Smith & Connors, LLC is seeking a Technical Lead to partner with the Tech Director and CTO. You will oversee new development work, ensure structured workflows from inquiry to stable production, and guide a growing team to deliver reliable, scalable digital products.

You will own the intersection of development, technical project management, and quality standards, driving the roadmap for the agency’s proprietary baseline website in collaboration with leadership.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of full stack development experience, with client-facing website work and best practices.
• 5+ years in an agency environment, understanding billable targets and fast-paced client work.
• Expert knowledge of WordPress, Drupal, and Git is ideal.
• DevOps experience including hosting environments and build pipelines.
• Capable of translating complex problems into clear PM instructions and coaching team members.
• Enjoys a leadership role and developing others through code reviews and guidance.

Responsibilities

• Strategic oversight of all development projects and driving the client-focused agency agenda.
• Lead SLA intake and web retainer management, defining technical roadmaps for resolutions.
• Manage deployment workflows, ensuring secure, efficient, and well-documented pipelines.
• Contribute to the evolution of the proprietary baseline website in collaboration with the CTO.
• Mentor production teams and balance bandwidth to lift overall team performance.
• Collaborate with creative, production, and sales to align engineering with agency goals and future offerings.

Skills

Full stack development

Agency experience

WordPress

Drupal

Git

DevOps

Technical leadership

Investigator mindset

Coaching leadership

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Hosting environments

Job description

As our Technical Lead, you will help run our agency’s digital engine, along with our Tech Director and CTO. You’ll assist with overseeing our new development work and SLA Program, and driving the evolution of our proprietary internal website product.

This is a high-impact, player-coach role: you’ll be deep in the code investigating complex issues, managing deployments, creating schedules and timelines, validating budgets, and providing guidance to other dev team members to ensure our production engine is both stable and scalable.

Our baseline (the non-negotiables)

• Be curious: Dig until you understand the "why" of a bug, a deployment failure, or a feature request.
• Be transparent: If it’s not documented in Trello, Slack, GitHub, or other communication tools, it didn’t happen.
• Be brave: Raise red flags early and push for infrastructure improvements before they become fires.
• Be direct: Give and receive feedback with radical candor.
• Be present: Fully engage with the team, the work, and our culture.

What you’ll do

This role sits at the intersection of development, technical project management, and setting quality standards. You ensure that when a client request comes in, it follows a structured path from investigation to a stable production environment.

• Strategic oversight: Maintain a bird’s-eye view of all dev projects. You help solve for the agency, not just the individual ticket.
• SLA & retainer leadership: Act as the primary investigator for SLA intake & web retainer management. You’ll diagnose the root cause of issues and the needs for new feature requests and provide project managers with the specific technical roadmap (tasks, hours, and steps) needed for resolution.
• DevOps & infrastructure: Manage our deployment workflows, ensuring our pipelines are secure, efficient, and documented.
• Product evolution: Contribute to our proprietary website "baseline". You will work with our CTO to lead the roadmap for expanding and future-proofing this core codebase.
• Resourcing & mentorship: Partner with production to balance team bandwidth. You will lift the floor of the entire team through technical guidance and rigorous code reviews.
• The ecosystem: You’ll work closely with creative, production and sales leads to ensure the production engine is discipline-connected and working toward larger agency goals, and to strategize innovative ways to expand our product and service offerings.

The requirements

• Experience: 10+ years of full stack development (strong focus on client-facing website development, deployments, and best practices).
• Ideally: 5+ years in an agency environment (you understand billable targets and the pace of overlapping client work).
• Technical mastery: Expert knowledge of WordPress, Drupal, and git is ideal.
• DevOps experience: Proven experience managing hosting environments and build pipelines.
• The "investigator" gene: You are a natural at technical discovery and can translate complex problems into clear instructions for PMs.
• Leadership heart: You enjoy the "coach" role and take pride in the growth of your direct reports.

Hourly compensation

• Compensation is dependent on experience and typically ranges between $95 - $125/hour.

Location

• We are a fully remote team and are open to all US locations.

Our agency

We are a brand-focused strategy, design, and website development firm. Our work encompasses brand identity, marketing and communications, website design and development, and more. The partners work directly with clients across disciplines to produce exceptional strategies and assets for our purpose-driven organizations and businesses. We have extremely high standards, employ a collaborative design approach, and run a fast-paced environment. Our ethos: humanity, honesty, directness, clarity, and quality.

Smith & Connors specifically seeks diverse perspectives and ideas among project management candidates. We are an inclusive studio committed to equity and diversity. This is an equal employment opportunity open to applicants within the United States.