Lead Software Engineer

Career Area:

Technology, Digital and Data

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you’re joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do — but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don’t just talk about progress and innovation here — we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live.

Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Cat Digital is the digital and technology arm of Caterpillar Inc., leveraging the latest technologies to build industry leading digital solutions for our customers and dealers. With over 1.5 million connected assets worldwide, our teams use data, technology, advanced analytics, telematics, and AI capabilities to help our customers build a better, more sustainable world.

Lead Software Engineer — Emerging Technology

Role Summary :

The Lead Software Engineer in the Emerging Technology group is a hands-on technical leader responsible for designing,

building, piloting, and scaling next-generation software solutions that apply emerging technologies to high-value business problems. This role combines deep software engineering expertise with practical innovation, helping translate exploratory concepts into secure, reliable, maintainable, and production-ready capabilities.

What You Will Do:

• Lead the architecture, design, development and testing of modern software solutions, prototypes, pilots, and reusable platform capabilities.

• Evaluate, prototype, and apply emerging technologies such as generative AI, agentic workflows, retrieval-augmented generation, cloud-native services, APIs, automation, and data-driven application patterns.

• Translate business opportunities, product goals, and technical requirements into scalable software designs, solution patterns, technical roadmaps, and implementation plans.

• Mentor engineers, provide technical direction, facilitate design reviews, and promote a culture of experimentation, learning, engineering excellence, and responsible technology adoption.

• Collaborate with product managers, architects, data scientists, cybersecurity, infrastructure, UX, and business stakeholders to deliver solutions aligned to organizational goals and risk expectations.

• Define and implement technical evaluation methods, including proof-of-concept success criteria, model or system performance measures, quality gates, automated testing, monitoring, and production readiness reviews.

• Identify technical risks, dependencies, integration needs, security considerations, and operational constraints early in the solution lifecycle and recommend practical mitigation strategies.

What

You Will Have:

Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.

Software Development: Knowledge of software development tools and activities; ability to produce software products or systems in line with product requirements.

Software Development Life Cycle: Knowledge of software development life cycle; ability to use a structured methodology for delivering and managing new or enhanced software products to the marketplace.

Software Integration Engineering: Knowledge of software integration processes and functions; ability to design, develop and maintain interfaces and linkage to alternative platforms and software packages.

Software Product Design/Architecture: Knowledge of software product design; ability to convert market requirements into the software product design.

Software Product Technical Knowledge: Knowledge of technical aspects of a software products; ability to design, configure and integrate technical aspects of software products..

Software Product Testing: Knowledge of software product testing; ability to design, plan, and execute testing strategies and tactics to ensure software product quality and adherence to stated requirements.

Considerations For Top Candidates:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline; equivalent practical experience may be considered.

• Progressive professional experience in software engineering, including hands-on development of complex applications, distributed systems, APIs, platforms, or cloud-native services.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical work across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, architecture, design, coding, testing, deployment.

• Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages such as Python, Java, JavaScript/Type Script, C#, Go, or similar languages.

• Experience designing scalable, secure, observable, and maintainable software using modern architecture patterns, APIs, automated testing, CI/CD, and Dev Ops practices.

• Working knowledge of cloud platforms,…