Lead Engineer: Agent Academy Job Northern Kentucky USA,Software Development

What would you be doing?

Writing lots of code
Lead teams through end-to-end delivery across the stack, from backend services to modern web UIs.
Set the technical direction for client engagements and be the go-to escalation point when things get tricky.
Pair program daily with teammates and clients to share knowledge, improve code quality, and grow together.
Practice TDD and continuous refactoring, and own the testing strategy for the codebase, including deciding what not to test.
Guide architecture decisions to support scalability, observability, and performance, including deployment, IAM, and observability design for containerized systems.
Collaborate closely with designers, product managers, and stakeholders to continuously deliver valuable software.
Map business value to engineering effort so clients can make good tradeoffs.
Coach developers on the team through pairing, mentoring, and modeling healthy engineering culture.
Drive incremental process improvement through retros and day to day feedback.
Influence technical direction beyond the team, working across client orgs and Focused's internal practices to share lessons, shape approaches, and raise the collective bar.
Stay curious through experimenting with new patterns in the GenAI space, share what works (and what doesn't), and help evolve how we build AI-powered software.

We are excited about you, because you:

You're a hands-on, full stack engineer with a strong track record of delivering software in collaborative, agile environments.
You have experience leading engineering teams and feel confident mentoring and supporting other developers.
You're proficient in Python and/or JS/Type Script (Ruby or similar works too), and you have real opinions on repo layout, dependency management, config, and tooling that you can back up.
You've diagnosed and fixed real concurrency problems in production, whether async/await or thread-based.
You believe that code quality matters, and that TDD and pairing help build better systems and stronger teams. You've owned a testing strategy, from unit and integration tests to regression suites and CI gates.
You've designed the deployment, IAM model, or observability for a containerized system on a cloud provider, and you've taken a system through a scaling inflection.
You've worked across a range of company sizes, from startups to enterprise, and have experience navigating complex organizations, building bridges across functions, and helping teams adopt modern development practices.
You know how to read the room, when to push and when to hold back, and you can handle difficult stakeholders without losing the relationship.
You're proactive. You see problems coming and raise them before they turn into fires.
You're as comfortable in the code as you are in a client meeting and can translate technical risks and wins into language anyone can understand.
You're excited about what's happening in the AI space but stay focused on delivering value.
You love to share what you're learning and make the team around you better.

Nice to have:

Exposure to LLM APIs or agent frameworks
Experience building AI-enabled applications with Lang Chain and LLMs that deliver production-ready outcomes for clients
Deep expertise in Lang Chain, Lang Graph, and Lang Smith
An understanding of how to architect AI-native systems responsibly and effectively

Work Arrangement & Compensation

This is a contract-to-hire role. It starts with an 8 week program followed by a one month evaluation period, for a total of about 3 months.
During the program, you'll be required to earn the Lang Chain Certified Agent Engineer certification and the Claude Architect certificate.
This role requires being in our Denver office three days per week.
This is an hourly position for the duration of the contract, with a pay range of $85 to $100 per hour. Final rate will be based on experience and skill level.
Focused is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this program.