{"id":4279831,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sita-lead-software-engineer","title":"Lead Software Engineer","company":{"id":94825,"name":"SITA","domain":"sita.aero","url":"https://alion.io/company/sitaonline","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Jibe","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":33,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.606,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":46,"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Delhi, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Git","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"Java","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"Spring Boot","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-13T17:21:02Z","employer_posted_date":null,"last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T17:21:02Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Overview\n\nWELCOME TO SITA\n\nAt SITA, we keep airports moving, airlines flying smoothly, and borders open. Our technology and communication innovations power the success of the global air travel industry.\n\nYou'll find us in 95% of international airports, working closely with over 2,500 transportation and government clients. Each partnership brings unique challenges, and we thrive on delivering fresh solutions and cutting-edge tech to keep operations running like clockwork. We don't just move the world forward-we're proud to be recognized as a Great Place to Work® by 79% of our employees and certified in most of our growing locations. Here, we feel empowered, supported, and inspired to grow.\n\nAre you ready to love your job\n\nThe adventure begins right here, with you, at SITA.\n\nThe role\n\nJoin SITA Lab, where we explore emerging technologies and turn promising ideas into working solutions that could change how air transport operates.\n\nYou will work with airports, airlines, SITA teams, technology partners and start-ups to identify difficult industry problems, rapidly explore potential solutions, and build real-world prototypes and pilots.\n\nModern AI and agentic development tools have fundamentally changed how we engineer software. We expect our engineers to use AI extensively to research, design, build, test and evolve solutions. Your value is not measured by how many lines of code you personally write, but by how effectively you turn ideas into high-quality working systems.\n\nAs Lead Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across SITA Lab initiatives and help evolve how the Lab itself engineers software in an AI-native environment.\n\nWhat You Will Do\n\nExplore\n\nInvestigate emerging technologies and assess how they could solve real problems in aviation.\nWork directly with customers and subject-matter experts to understand operational problems, challenge assumptions and identify opportunities.\nRapidly evaluate technologies, start-ups, open-source projects, APIs, models and platforms.\nLead technical discovery, experimentation and design-thinking activities.\nTurn loosely defined ideas into hypotheses that can be tested with working software.\n\nEngineer\n\nDesign and build prototypes, proofs of concept and pilot solutions, moving from idea to working system quickly.\nUse modern AI-assisted and agentic software-development techniques throughout the engineering lifecycle.\nDecompose complex engineering objectives into tasks that can be effectively executed by people and AI agents.\nProvide agents with the appropriate context, requirements, constraints, architecture and acceptance criteria.\nBuild the tests, evaluations and observability needed to verify AI-generated solutions rather than trusting generated output.\nIntegrate APIs, enterprise systems, data sources, AI models and existing SITA capabilities into end-to-end solutions.\nMove comfortably between languages, frameworks and platforms rather than being constrained by a single technology stack.\n\nLead\n\nOwn technical direction and architecture for Lab initiatives from initial experiment through customer pilot.\nMake pragmatic engineering decisions that balance experimentation speed, quality, security and maintainability.\nEstablish effective patterns for collaborative engineering between people and AI agents.\nReview and challenge designs and implementations produced by both engineers and AI agents.\nMentor engineers in architecture, engineering judgement and effective use of AI development tools.\nIdentify when an AI-generated solution is superficially plausible but fundamentally wrong.\nDecide when to prototype rapidly and when a solution requires production-grade engineering controls.\n\nDeliver responsibly\n\nEnsure solutions have appropriate automated testing, security controls, observability and documentation.\nApply secure engineering practices when using AI agents, particularly around credentials, customer data, tool access and external systems.\nDefine appropriate operating boundaries and human approval points for autonomous systems.\nWork within SITA architecture, security and AI-governance requirements while maintaining the pace expected from an innovation Lab.\n\nInfluence\n\nDemonstrate new technologies and solutions to customers and senior stakeholders.\nExplain complex technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.\nCollaborate across SITA, customers, industry groups, open-source communities and technology partners.\nHelp transfer successful Lab experiments into SITA product and operational environments.\n\nWho You Are\n\nYou are an experienced engineer who is excited rather than threatened by the changing nature of software engineering.\n\nYou have excellent software-engineering fundamentals and architectural judgement.\nYou are an active and sophisticated user of AI-assisted and agentic development tools.\nYou can demonstrate examples where AI materially changed the way you engineered or delivered software.\nYou understand that using an AI coding agent effectively requires much more than writing prompts.\nYou know how to provide agents with context, constraints and acceptance criteria, and how to validate their output.\nYou can quickly understand an unfamiliar repository, technology or domain.\nYou are comfortable allowing an agent to implement something you could implement yourself, and equally comfortable taking control when engineering judgement requires it.\nYou think in terms of systems, interfaces, events, data flows and failure modes rather than individual code files.\nYou naturally experiment, learn and adapt.\nYou thrive with ambiguous problems where neither the requirements nor the solution are obvious.\nYou prefer building and testing something to spending weeks debating whether it might work.\nYou can move comfortably between architecture, coding, customer conversations and technical leadership.\nYou can lead and mentor other engineers without becoming the bottleneck.\n\nQualifications\n\nTechnical experience\n\nEssential\n\nSignificant professional experience designing, building and operating software systems.\nStrong software-engineering fundamentals, including architecture, APIs, distributed systems, testing, security and observability.\nHands-on capability in at least one mainstream programming ecosystem, with the ability to become productive rapidly in others.\nPractical experience using modern AI coding tools or coding agents as part of real software engineering.\nExperience with cloud-native architectures, containers and Kubernetes.\nExperience designing distributed, event-driven and API-based systems.\nExperience building and consuming REST APIs and modern integration interfaces.\nExperience with relational and NoSQL data stores.\nStrong understanding of Git-based development, CI/CD, automated testing and DevOps practices.\nExperience leading technical projects and mentoring engineers.\n\nHighly desirable\n\nJava and Spring Boot and/or Python.\nTypeScript or JavaScript and modern web frameworks.\nAzure and/or AWS.\nKafka or equivalent event-streaming technologies.\nLLM APIs and AI application architectures.\nAgentic systems, tool or function calling, MCP or equivalent tool-integration patterns.\nAI evaluation, tracing and observability.\nExperience taking prototypes through to customer pilots or production.\nExperience in aviation, airports, airlines or the wider travel industry.\n\nWhat Success Looks Like\n\nYou convert uncertain customer or industry problems into testable technical hypotheses.\nYou use AI agents to increase delivery speed without lowering engineering, security or governance standards.\nYou create working demonstrations and pilots that generate evidence, learning and clear next decisions.\nYou improve the technical capability of the wider Lab team and reduce dependency on individual experts.\nYou help successful experiments progress towards robust product or operational adoption.\n\nWhat We Offer\n\nWe're all about diversity. We operate in 200 countries and speak 60 different languages and cultures. We're really proud of our inclusive environment. Our offices are comfortable and fun places to work, and we make sure you get to work from home too. Find out what it's like to join our team and take a step closer to your best life ever.\n\nFlex Week: Work from home up to 2 days/week (depending on your team's needs)\n\nFlex Day: Make your workday suit your life and plans.\n\nFlex-Location: Take up to 30 days a year to work from any location in the world.\n\nEmployee Wellbeing: We have got you covered with our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), for you and your dependents 24/7, 365 days/year. We also offer Champion Health - a personalized platform that supports a range of wellbeing needs.\n\nProfessional Development: At SITA, we believe growth fuels innovation. Our learning ecosystem offers access to world-class platforms and programs designed to help you thrive. From LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft's Enterprise Skills Initiative, and Airport Council International -available to all employees-to specialized solutions like Pluralsight for technology upskilling, Harvard Business Publishing for people leadership, Stanford for strategic development and many others, we align learning opportunities with your Development Plan and our business priorities. Your development journey is supported every step of the way.\n\nCompetitive Benefits: Competitive benefits that make sense with both your local market and employment status.\n\nSITA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value a diverse workforce. In support of our Employment Equity Program, we encourage women, aboriginal people, members of visible minorities, and/or persons with disabilities to apply and self-identify in the application process.\n\nSalary / Compensation Note\n\nHidden (-999)","description_format":"text","description_chars":9726,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Managed Network Services","Travel Technology","Border Security","Commercial Aviation"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-13T20:09:30Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":46,"reasons":["seen:0","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-13T21:47:35Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sita-lead-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sita-lead-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T21:47:35Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":43458,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":94825},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=94825"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsita-lead-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsita-lead-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsita-lead-software-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/sita-lead-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsita-lead-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4279831}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"sita.aero","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4279831},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}