Position Purpose and Objectives

Partner with staff at all levels to design, maintain, and enhance CUTX's website, online banking platform, and internal member- and employee-facing systems. The ideal candidate is a hands-on professional with extensive technical expertise and a strong knowledge of both front-end and back-end systems. Translate business needs into client-friendly functionality that improves and expands CUTX's digital offerings and presence. Collaborate with the development team within an Agile process to scope, plan, and deliver projects on schedule. Lead the design and implementation of microservices, including authentication, authorization, and rate-limiting strategies. Define the overall technical architecture and make technology-stack and design-pattern. Establish and enforce coding standards, code-review processes, branching strategies, and software development best practices across the team.

Key Responsibilities and Essential Functions

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Participate in product scoping, discovery, and framing, providing technical input that helps translate user features into system design.
• Contribute to the architectural design and decisions of software solutions, ensuring scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Support and mentor other developers on the team.
• Collaborate with Product to prioritize feature development against the technical roadmap and technical-debt initiatives.
• Participate in the recruitment and onboarding of new engineering talent.
• Define and enforce coding standards, code-review processes, and branching strategies across the team.

Development & Integration

• Build front- and back-end systems focused on customer use cases.
• Develop and maintain scalable, secure, high-performing web applications using Node.js for the backend and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with frameworks such as Angular and React for the frontend.
• Design and implement efficient, well-documented RESTful API endpoints, ensuring seamless integration with other systems and services.
• Implement and integrate APIs from platforms such as Salesforce, DocuSign, TransUnion, Banno, Alkami, Episys, etc., to enhance application functionality and user experience.
• Demonstrate proficiency in SOAP APIs and WSDL to integrate with external systems and services, expanding the application's capabilities.
• Leverage website CMS (Content Management Systems) to efficiently manage and update website content for a smooth user experience.
• Design, optimize, and maintain data models and queries across relational (e.g., MSSQL) and non-relational (e.g., MongoDB) data stores.
• Implement authentication, authorization, and secure handling of secrets and credentials across applications and integrations.
• Lead the design and implementation of microservices, including rate-limiting and API-versioning strategies.

Code Quality, Testing & Continuous Improvement

• Ensure code quality through rigorous reviews and testing methodologies.
• Perform comprehensive code reviews, identify bugs, and propose improvements for quality, maintainability, and adherence to industry best practices.
• Conduct thorough testing and debugging to optimize application performance and ensure seamless functionality across different browsers and devices.
• Stay up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends, introducing innovative solutions and enhancing the team's technical expertise.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify opportunities for process improvement and innovation in development practices.
• Provide ongoing maintenance support during the post-deployment phase.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and automated testing in Azure DevOps to support reliable, repeatable deployments.
• Monitor application performance and reliability, using logging and observability to diagnose and resolve production issues.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with product and design teams to align project goals.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather and understand requirements and translate them into technical specifications and solutions.
• Engage with senior leadership and stakeholders on technical deliverables and challenges.

Performance Outcomes & KPIs

Outcome

Primary KPI

Reporting Cadence

Target / Direction

The team delivers committed engineering work predictably against scope.

Sprint Commitment Reliability - percent of committed story points delivered per sprint across the team.

Sprint / Monthly
• ≥ 85%

Code merged to production is high quality and low defect.

Post-Release Defect Rate - defects identified in production within 30 days of release, per release.

Monthly

▼ < 10 defects per release

Production systems remain available and performant.

Production Incidents Attributable to Owned Code - count of Sev-1/Sev-2 incidents.

Monthly

▼ < 5 per quarter

Integrations with core, digital, and partner platforms are stable.

API / Integration Uptime - percent uptime of owned RESTful endpoints and integrations.

Monthly
• ≥ 99.5%

Peer review discipline is consistently applied across the team.

Pull Request Review Coverage - percent of merged PRs with at least one substantive peer review.

Monthly
• 100%

Architectural and technical decisions are sound, documented, and reviewed.

Technical Design Review Coverage - percent of major features or services with a documented, peer-reviewed technical design before build.

Per release / Monthly
• 100%

Developers receive consistent technical guidance and grow in capability.

Mentorship & Onboarding Effectiveness - new-engineer ramp-to-productivity time and cadence of technical guidance and 1:1s.

Quarterly

First production ready code in 6 weeks.

AI-assisted code contributions are reviewed before merge.

Human-in-the-Loop Review Rate on AI-Generated Code - percent of AI-assisted contributions reviewed, validated, and approved prior to merge.

Monthly
• 100%

Qualifications

Education

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

Experience

• Minimum five (5) years of experience in front-end and back-end application development and testing, including demonstrated experience in a technical-lead or senior engineering capacity.
• Demonstrated experience providing technical leadership, guidance, and mentorship to a team of developers.
• Proven experience owning architectural and design decisions for scalable, secure, high-performing full-stack web applications.
• Experience leading the full software development lifecycle in an Agile environment, from scoping and design through delivery and post-deployment support.
• Demonstrated experience building and integrating RESTful APIs with external systems and partner platforms.
• Working knowledge of object-oriented methodologies, relational databases, and data modeling.
• Exposure to enterprise systems such as CRM, SFA, and ERP platforms.
• Experience in the financial services industry (credit union, bank, or fintech) strongly preferred.
• Prior experience using AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) within a governed environment preferred.

Knowledge & Skills

• Solid experience in Node.js for backend development, including designing and building robust and scalable RESTful APIs, handling authentication, data manipulation, and integration with external systems.
• Proficiency in front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with frameworks like React or Angular, to create responsive and user-friendly interfaces.
• Familiarity with integrating and working with APIs, ensuring seamless data exchange and system integration.
• Experience working with website CMS (Content Management Systems) for efficient content management, template creation, and customization.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot and debug complex applications, ensuring smooth and error-free user experiences.
• Solid understanding of software development principles, best practices, and coding standards, delivering high-quality code that is maintainable and scalable.
• Proven ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment, as well as independently when required, showcasing excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• A financial background or familiarity with financial systems and processes is advantageous, enabling you to comprehend the unique requirements of our industry and deliver tailored solutions.
• Strong consideration given to having experience in the financial industry.
• Hands-on experience with Azure DevOps build and release pipelines and deployment processes.
• Experience with log-tracing and observability platforms such as Splunk and Datadog for debugging, incident management, and production support of critical applications.

Core Competencies

Competency

Proficiency Level

Why This Matters in This Role

AI Literacy

Advanced

As a technical lead, the role uses AI-augmented developer tooling (Tier 2) and sets and enforces human-in-the-loop review standards for every AI output that touches CUTX code, configuration, or data across the team.

Technical Craft

Advanced

The role sets the technical bar for production member- and employee-facing systems and owns architectural decisions; depth in full-stack engineering directly drives team-wide reliability and member experience.

Leadership & Mentorship

Advanced

The role provides technical direction, mentors developers, and grows team capability; effectiveness here shapes the quality and consistency of the entire team's output.

Risk & Security Awareness

Advanced

Code and integrations handle member NPI and core banking data; the role models secure coding and ensures timely escalation of vulnerabilities across the team.

Operational Discipline

Advanced

The role establishes and enforces review, testing, documentation, and traceability standards so production changes support audit and change management.

Collaboration

Advanced

The role partners with product, design, QA, integration partners, and senior leadership; effective collaboration is essential to coordinated delivery.

Communication

Advanced

The role explains technical concepts, trade-offs, and risks to engineering peers, business stakeholders, and senior leadership, and represents the team's technical position.

AI & Technology Expectations

AI-Augmented Workflows

The following workflows are AI-augmented in this role. The Full Stack Developer Lead is expected to work fluently within these workflows, exercise sound judgment over AI outputs, follow all applicable controls, and set the standard for responsible AI use across the team.

• AI-assisted code generation, refactoring, and unit-test scaffolding (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot).
• AI-assisted code review and static analysis suggestions.
• AI-assisted technical documentation drafting (API specs, runbooks, README content) from approved sources.
• AI-assisted research and synthesis of framework, library, and integration documentation.

AI Tier and Human-in-the-Loop Responsibility

This role operates in AI Tier 2 for its principal AI-augmented workflows (see Appendix A). The Full Stack Developer Lead retains accountability for any decision, communication, or member/employee-impacting action influenced by AI output, consistent with the CUTX Generative AI Usage Policy §3.4.

The Full Stack Developer Lead is required to:

• Apply human-in-the-loop review on every AI-generated code change, configuration change, or technical document before commit, merge, or publication.
• Validate AI-suggested code for correctness, security, licensing, and alignment with CUTX standards prior to inclusion in a pull request.
• Ensure human-in-the-loop review standards are understood and consistently applied by the developers they guide.
• Stop reliance on AI output and escalate immediately if the output appears inaccurate, insecure, non-compliant, or outside the role's documented scope (Generative AI Usage Policy §3.5).
• Never enter member NPI, confidential CUTX information, or proprietary CUTX source code into any AI tool not explicitly approved for that data classification.
• Complete all required AI training within thirty (30) days of hire and maintain currency on annual refreshers.

Approved AI Tools

The role is approved to use the following AI tools in performing essential functions (subject to the Generative AI Usage Policy and any tool-specific guidance issued by the AI Council):

• CUTX-approved internal AI assistants (e.g., Sam) for general productivity and approved knowledge tasks.
• Microsoft Copilot for office productivity (drafting, summarization, spreadsheet support).
• GitHub Copilot or equivalent AI coding assistant deployed under CUTX enterprise terms, where approved by the AI Council and Information Security.
• CUTX-approved AI-augmented developer tooling integrated into the engineering toolchain.

Use of AI tools outside this list requires prior approval from the role's department leader and the AI Council, per the Generative AI Usage Policy §4.

Prohibited AI Use

In addition to the prohibited uses defined in the Generative AI Usage Policy §3.6, the following are specifically prohibited in this role:

• Using AI output as the sole b