Software Engineer, Software Architect

Job Description:

Job Overview The Developer IV leads technical modernization efforts across Wheels' application landscape, with a mandate to evolve legacy systems toward a modern, AI-enabled architecture. This role owns the technical roadmap that connects day-to-day support of mission-critical legacy applications with the organization's broader goal of becoming AI-first, identifying where AI tooling, modern integration patterns, and cloud-ready design can reduce technical debt, accelerate delivery, and improve system resilience.

The role blends hands-on technical leadership of the legacy systems programming team with a forward-looking architecture mandate: evaluating, piloting, and scaling AI-assisted development practices, and building the case for, and executing against, a modernized technology stack.

Key Responsibilities:

Essential Functions Technical & Team Leadership Serve as technical lead for the legacy systems programming team, guiding, reviewing, and directing technical work to ensure business needs and modernization goals are met.

Act as technical team leader on projects, coordinating development and modernization efforts from architecture design through implementation.

Instruct, coach, and mentor team members, including on AI-assisted development tools and modern engineering practices, to raise the team's overall technical capability.

Participate in scrum activities with Web Development and broader Engineering teams to align legacy and modern work streams.

Architecture Evolution & AI-First Modernization Own and evolve the technical roadmap for migrating legacy systems functionality toward modern, API-first, cloud-ready architecture.

Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Engineering leadership to define target-state architecture and sequence modernization work into deliverable, low-risk increments.

Evaluate, pilot, and scale AI-enabled development tooling (e.g., AI coding assistants, automated code comprehension and refactoring, AI-assisted testing and documentation) to accelerate legacy modernization and improve day-to-day delivery.

Identify opportunities to apply AI/ML within business applications themselves, not just the development process, such as intelligent automation, anomaly detection, and decision support.

Champion replacement of point-to-point integrations with standardized, event-driven, and API-based integration patterns.

Define, track, and report modernization KPIs (e.g., deployment frequency, change failure rate, legacy footprint reduction, technical debt trend) to demonstrate measurable progress.

Ensure all AI tooling and automation adopted by the team complies with Wheels' data governance, security, and compliance standards.

Application Development & Support Work with business users to understand requirements, issues, and business processes, translating them into sound technical designs.

Develop, test, maintain, and support business application programs, adhering to departmental standards while identifying opportunities to modernize as work is touched.

Perform quality assurance testing for all created or modified programs, plus any other applications affected.

Analyze production applications to isolate problems, determine more efficient methods, and surface modernization candidates.

Research and implement problem resolutions in a timely and effective manner.

Maintain current knowledge of standard languages, coding methods, and emerging AI-assisted development practices; recommend enhancements to departmental standards as needed.

Other Duties Document technical requirements and create technical designs for self and others based on business requirements, including target-state architecture diagrams.

Ensure the quality of software implemented by the team meets Wheels' quality standards.

Provide project and system documentation per department standards.

Present modernization progress, risks, and recommendations to technical and business stakeholders.

Respond to on-call emergencies pertaining to recent application/module enhancements as needed.

Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Leadership Responsibilities This position carries technical leadership responsibility for the legacy systems programming team, guiding, reviewing, and directing technical work, along with architecture-level influence over Wheels' legacy-to-modern application roadmap. This role is expected to shape how AI-assisted development is adopted across the broader Engineering organization, not only within its own team.

Competencies:

Skills Remain customer focused by creating useful internal and external collaborative relationships.

Demonstrate problem-solving and resourcefulness by obtaining results through decisive action.

Work independently in an organized and structured manner, consistently achieving thoroughness and accuracy while successfully juggling competing priorities.

Think architecturally, balancing near-term delivery against long-term technical debt and modernization goals.

Demonstrate fluency with AI-assisted development…