Description

Position Summary

The Lead Software Engineer is a senior technical contributor responsible for designing, building, and delivering enterprise software solutions while providing technical leadership within a project, product, or team. This role combines hands-on software development with technical guidance, architecture, design, and solution delivery responsibilities.

This role helps drive technology solutions supporting one of the largest mortgage lending platforms in the United States.

loanDepot is evolving from traditional software development toward an AI-enabled and increasingly agentic engineering model. Lead Software Engineers are expected to combine strong software engineering fundamentals with modern AI-assisted development practices while helping teams adopt effective approaches for using AI coding assistants and coding agents throughout the software development lifecycle.

Our core technology ecosystem is centered on C#/.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure, and modern web technologies. Python and other technologies are used where they are the right tools for the problem.

This is a hands-on engineering role. Successful candidates will be comfortable balancing software delivery, technical leadership, architecture, code quality, and engineering best practices while remaining actively involved in software design and implementation.

Enterprise Software Engineering

• Design, build, test, and support enterprise-grade software solutions that address meaningful business needs.
• Develop and evolve applications primarily using C#/.NET, SQL Server, Azure, APIs, and related technologies while leveraging other technologies where appropriate.
• Design APIs, services, integrations, data models, and application architectures that balance scalability, maintainability, security, performance, and operational complexity.
• Lead technical design discussions and participate in architectural decisions within projects and teams.
• Modernize existing applications while maintaining enterprise stability, security, performance, and reliability.
• Participate in rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept development to transform business opportunities into working software that can be evaluated and evolved into production solutions.
• Work directly with product, business, architecture, and engineering stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver effective solutions.
• Pick up new technologies quickly. Software development is constantly evolving; this role is expected to stay up-to-date.

Agentic Software Engineering

• Use AI-assisted and agentic software development tools as a normal part of the engineering workflow to accelerate research, development, testing, debugging, documentation, modernization, and delivery.
• Effectively direct and collaborate with coding agents by decomposing problems, providing context and constraints, evaluating generated solutions, and taking accountability for resulting software.
• Help establish practical approaches for using AI coding assistants and coding agents within engineering teams.
• Build solutions that incorporate AI-native capabilities, intelligent automation, and emerging AI technologies where they provide measurable business value.
• Own software quality regardless of how code is produced; ensure human-written and AI-generated code meets standards for correctness, security, maintainability, performance, testing, and observability.
• Develop automated tests and use AI-enabled testing and validation techniques to shorten feedback cycles.

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical direction within projects and help teams make sound design and implementation decisions.
• Perform code reviews and design reviews to improve software quality, maintainability, and consistency.
• Provide guidance and support to software engineers through technical collaboration, knowledge sharing, and constructive feedback.
• Help identify technical risks, dependencies, and implementation challenges and contribute to resolving them.
• Lead or contribute to significant engineering initiatives and project delivery efforts.
• Promote engineering best practices related to software quality, testing, maintainability, security, observability, and operational support.

What Success Looks Like

• Deliver applications, APIs, and integrations that support key business objectives.
• Successfully lead technical delivery for projects and initiatives while balancing quality, delivery speed, maintainability, and business needs.
• Improve software quality, engineering effectiveness, and technical execution through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance.
• Become effective quickly in new domains, systems, and business areas.
• Communicate effectively with developers, architects, QA, DevOps, business analysts, and other project stakeholders.

Required Qualifications — Technical Expertise

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience designing and delivering production enterprise applications.
• Advanced proficiency with C# and .NET and strong knowledge of the Microsoft development ecosystem.
• Strong Microsoft SQL Server and T-SQL experience, including data modeling, query design, performance optimization, and troubleshooting.
• Strong experience designing, implementing, consuming, and maintaining RESTful APIs and distributed application services.
• Experience building and operating applications within Microsoft Azure or a comparable public cloud.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, design patterns, distributed systems, and technical tradeoffs.
• Experience leading technical design discussions and software delivery efforts.
• Experience with source control, branching strategies, pull requests, automated builds, CI/CD, and modern software delivery.
• Ability to evaluate software for readability, maintainability, performance, security, testability, and operational reliability.
• Experience with Python, JavaScript, Angular, and/or TypeScript preferred.

Required Qualifications — AI & Agentic Engineering

• Hands-on experience using modern AI coding assistants, coding agents, or agentic development tools.
• Ability to use AI to accelerate delivery while maintaining engineering ownership and accountability.
• Understanding of context, requirements, constraints, architecture, and validation criteria needed for reliable agent execution.
• Experience helping other engineers effectively adopt AI-assisted software development practices.
• Demonstrated curiosity and willingness to adapt engineering practices as AI capabilities evolve.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Information Systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 10+ years of relevant software engineering experience.
• Previous experience operating as a Lead Engineer, Senior Engineer, Technical Lead, or equivalent role.
• Experience building software within highly regulated industries.
• Mortgage or financial services experience preferred but not required.
• Experience modernizing large enterprise applications or transitioning legacy systems toward cloud-native architectures.
• Experience building or operating AI-enabled applications, including LLM-based workflows, RAG, agentic workflows, evaluations, or AI-specific observability. 

Why Work for #teamloanDepot

• Work with other passionate, purposeful, and customer-centric team members.
• Inclusive, diverse, and collaborative culture where people from all backgrounds can thrive.
• Extensive internal growth and professional development opportunities including tuition reimbursement.
• Comprehensive benefits package including Medical/Dental/Vision.
• Wellness program to support both mental and physical health.
• Generous paid time off options to support work-life balance.

About loanDepot

loanDepot (NYSE: LDI) is a digital commerce company committed to serving its customers throughout the home ownership journey. Since its launch in 2010, loanDepot has revolutionized the mortgage industry with a digital-first approach that makes it easier, faster, and less stressful to purchase or refinance a home. Today, as the nation's second largest non-bank retail mortgage lender, loanDepot enables customers to achieve the American dream of homeownership through a broad suite of lending and real estate services that simplify one of life's most complex transactions. With headquarters in Southern California and offices nationwide, loanDepot is committed to serving the communities in which its team lives and works through a variety of local, regional, and national philanthropic efforts.

Base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay for this role is between $138,000 and $190,500. Your base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors, including your job-related knowledge/skills, qualifications, experience, and market location. 

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.