Lead Software Engineer - Backend
First seen by Alion on Oct 29, 2026.
About Us:
We're building the next generation of AI-powered business software. Our Chatbot application brings AI directly into customer and business workflows, combining a robust backend with LLM-powered agents to get real work done through conversation.
This is a chance to work on hard problems in backend systems, LLM agents, and orchestration—building zero-to-one, owning your area end-to-end, and shipping to production at scale.
Note: This is a customer-facing role, and strong communication skills are essential.
About the Role:
We're looking for a Lead Software Engineer to help build and scale the backend and AI capabilities of our Chatbot application. This is a backend-heavy role for someone who can design robust, production-grade systems in Java while also bringing hands-on experience building LLM agents and orchestration layers that power intelligent conversational experiences.
What You'll Do:
- Design, build, and scale backend services in Java that power the Chatbot application.
- Build and integrate LLM-powered agents into the chatbot, including agent orchestration, tool use, and multi-step reasoning workflows.
- Own features end-to-end—from architecture and design through implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration.
- Drive technical decisions on system architecture, reliability, performance, and scalability for a backend serving real-time conversational workloads.
- Lead by example—set engineering standards, review designs and code, and mentor engineers on the team.
- Collaborate closely with product, design, and AI/ML teams to translate business requirements into shipped functionality.
- Work directly with customers to understand real-world use cases, troubleshoot issues, and gather feedback to inform the roadmap.
- Continuously improve the chatbot's conversational quality, reliability, and response accuracy.
What We're Looking For:
- 4-6 years of backend engineering experience, with strong, hands-on expertise in Java.
- Practical experience building LLM-powered agents and agent orchestration in production systems.
- Solid understanding of LLM fundamentals—prompting, tool use, reasoning, and evaluation.
- Strong experience designing and building scalable, production-grade backend systems and APIs.
- Ability to take technical ownership and lead design/architecture decisions with minimal oversight.
- Comfort working in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment, balancing hands-on coding with technical leadership.
- Excellent communication skills—this is a customer-facing role, and you'll regularly engage directly with customers to understand needs and explain technical solutions.
Skills
Java, Generative AI, Agentic AI, Conversational AI, AI Integration, API