Tech Lead Software Engineer Global

Department:

Technology

Our Company Promise

We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.

Job Description:

Job Summary Lead and motivate a Team of developers in the planning, delivery, and operation of highly reliable software. Accountable for the technical quality of the software that the Development Team produces and closely collaborates with the Business and other Stakeholders to ensure software meets functional and non-functional expectations. Act as an interface between the Development Team and Leadership, ensuring capacity and skillsets are aligned to meet ongoing delivery expectations. Time is allocated across Project Leadership, Technical Leadership/Mentoring, and Software Development/System Engineering.

Responsibilities Provide accurate development estimates in support of feasibility assessments and planned development activities

Create, maintain, review and approve application designs in collaboration with Solution Architects and shared services Teams, ensuring alignment to the appropriate solution architectures and taking tradeoffs into account

Develop, maintain, and review software with a focus on quality and maintainability

Develop, maintain, review, and execute unit, functional, and integration tests with a focus on automation and test-driven development

Provide technical oversight for performance testing, ensuring plan and outcomes align to expected non-functional requirements

Plan and oversee application deployment activities and sequencing in non-production and production environments

Investigate new technologies that could improve the applications and development activities

Identify and resolve technical debt as appropriate, weighing the development effort against the value returned

Mentor and coach Development Team on relevant architecture, design, development, and operations topics

Evaluate code to ensure that it is valid, is properly structured, meets industry standards, and is compatible with browsers, devices, or operating systems

May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders

Architecture and development of large-scale cloud-native platforms and distributed systems (8+ years). AI/ML knowledge.

Expert Python and backend engineering including APIs, microservices, event-driven architectures, and system design

Strong AWS expertise across Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, EventBridge, Step Functions, IAM, CloudWatch, and security

Deep experience in observability, telemetry, logging, tracing, OpenTelemetry, monitoring, and Site Reliability Engineering

Technical leadership, CI/CD, DevSecOps, architecture governance, performance optimisation, and mentoring

Own the end-to-end platform architecture for telemetry, evaluations, observability, and Agentic AI Recommendations Platform.

Lead engineering standards, technical direction, scalability, security, reliability, and platform evolution.

Mentor engineers and drive adoption of modern cloud, AI, and observability engineering practices

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Advanced knowledge of software development methodologies, practices, concepts, and technologies

Advanced knowledge of at least one programming language and at least general knowledge of one or more additional programming languages

Knowledge of project management methodology and principles

Ability to demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving abilities with a proactive mindset to get ahead of issues

Skilled in communication with ability to articulate a clear direction and priorities on ideas, approaches, concepts, options, risks, impacts, and recommendations to technical, non-technical, and Leadership audiences with ability to adapt the message accordingly

Ability to articulate the technical implementation and how it provides business value

Ability to lead ideation, presentation, and group-thinking sessions

Ability to influence effectively without authority up through Senior Leadership levels to achieve desired business outcomes

Ability to lead multiple efforts concurrently, whether administrative or project related, while maintaining a successful level of completion in their own work

Ability to work in a fast-paced, Team-based, Customer service-oriented environment

Architecture and development of large-scale cloud-native platforms and distributed systems (8+ years). AI/ML knowledge.

Expert Python and backend engineering including APIs, microservices, event-driven architectures, and system design

Strong AWS expertise across Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, EventBridge, Step Functions, IAM, CloudWatch, and security

Deep experience in observability, telemetry, logging, tracing, OpenTelemetry, monitoring, and Site Reliability Engineering

Technical leadership, CI/CD, DevSecOps, architecture governance, performance optimisation, and mentoring

Agentic AI and LLM application architectures

LangGraph, LangChain, MCP Frameworks

Kafka, Kinesis, Streaming architectures

Grafana, Datadog, Prometheus, PagerDuty

Education Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training

Experience Required: Expert level experience, expansive and far reaching knowledge in software engineering

8-10 years of relevant work-related experience

Architecture and development of large-scale cloud-native platforms and distributed systems (8+ years). AI/ML knowledge.

Expert Python and backend engineering including APIs, microservices, event-driven architectures, and system design

Strong AWS expertise across Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, EventBridge, Step Functions, IAM, CloudWatch, and security

Deep experience in observability, telemetry, logging, tracing, OpenTelemetry, monitoring, and Site Reliability Engineering

Technical leadership, CI/CD, DevSecOps, architecture governance, performance optimisation, and mentoring

Preferred Experience

Agentic AI and LLM application architectures

LangGraph, LangChain, MCP Frameworks

Kafka, Kinesis, Streaming architectures

Grafana, Datadog, Prometheus, PagerDuty

Other Qualifications Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information

Ability to work extended hours as needed

Ability to work onsite approximately 3 days per week and as required by the business.

Southwest Airlines is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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