Services Engineering Lead; IC – Digital Engineering

Services Engineering Lead

The Services Engineering Lead (IC) is a hands-on individual contributor responsible for the design, development, and maintenance of backend services, APIs, and distributed systems for Digital Engineering. This role is delivery-first: the incoming lead fully integrates as an IC into the services codebase and ships production work directly, using deep technical expertise in Java-based microservices, container orchestration, and modern integration patterns.

They operate as a lead of AI coding agents — decomposing work, directing, reviewing, and integrating the output of agentic tooling to multiply their own throughput and complete the bulk of delivery. In addition, partial bandwidth is allocated to leading a thin near-shore + offshore team and supervising the work they produce. The role architects shared components and standards across all RCG brands, maintains accountability for the overall engineering health of their product area, participates in Agile ceremonies, and collaborates across all technology layers.

• Personally deliver production backend services and APIs as the primary mode of work.
• Architect, design, and implement scalable microservices and distributed systems for cloud and on-premise deployment.
• Create technical design specifications and translate high-level architecture into working software and documentation.
• Evaluate new technologies and practices for potential use by the engineering organization.
• Author and evangelize engineering standards and best practices across teams.
• Design and develop Dev Ops best practices for the services layer.

• Operate as a lead of AI agents: plan, decompose, and delegate implementation tasks to AI coding agents, then review, correct, and integrate their output to completion.
• Use agentic tooling to multiply personal delivery throughput across microservices, integrations, and infrastructure-as-code work.
• Apply strong engineering judgment to validate AI-generated code against architecture, security, performance, and quality standards before it ships.
• Establish effective prompting, context-engineering, and verification patterns so AI-driven work remains correct, maintainable, and production-ready.
• Own end-to-end accountability for all delivered work regardless of whether it originated from the lead directly, an AI agent, or the supervised team.

• Lead design and development of Java/Spring Boot microservices and systems integrations.
• Architect APIs using GraphQL and modern integration patterns.
• Build and support event-driven architectures using Kafka and messaging patterns.
• Implement reactive programming patterns (Web Flux, Project Reactor) and non-blocking I/O.
• Manage container orchestration using Docker and Kubernetes with Kustomize.
• Design and maintain Git Ops workflows and CI/CD pipeline architecture using Argo CD.
• Design and operate Couchbase and No
  
  SQL database solutions for high-performance, distributed data access.
• Work with relational databases and stored procedures as needed.

• Participate in testing and certification processes.
• Monitor system and application performance; perform predictive maintenance.
• Ensure systems are stable and performing per SLAs.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, reliability, and security.

• With partial bandwidth, lead a thin near-shore + offshore team and supervise the work they deliver.
• Direct, review, and integrate team contributions; conduct code reviews to drive engineering best practices.
• Guide the team in distributed system design, microservice patterns, and reactive programming.
• Set clear, well-scoped tasks and verify completion to standard across the distributed team.
• Collaborate with product, design, and delivery teams; act as technical liaison to business stakeholders.

• Participate actively in Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, backlog refinement) to ensure overall engineering progress aligns with roadmaps and timelines.
• Ensure that the team is meeting product owner goals and business priorities.
• Maintain awareness of engineering health across all technology layers of the product — not just services.
• Identify cross-layer risks, dependencies, and blockers; escalate proactively.
• Know when to engage subject matter experts for other technology layers (iOS, Android, Web, AEM, React Native) and facilitate collaboration to resolve cross-cutting concerns.
• Ensure that backend services, APIs, and integrations support the needs of all client platforms cleanly.

• Stay current with backend, distributed systems, and cloud-native technologies.
• Create archetypes of new technologies and techniques for others to learn from, including AI-assisted engineering workflows.
• Drive adoption of modern patterns and tools across the services layer.

• 7+ years of…