Job Summary

The Lead .NET Engineer will lead the design, development, and engineering standards for a governed GraphQL Backend for Frontend (BFF) platform that enables web, mobile, and future digital channels to access aggregated platform services through a scalable interface. The role combines hands-on .NET engineering with technical leadership across GraphQL, distributed systems, service orchestration, security, observability, resiliency, cloud-native development, and platform governance. The engineer will establish reusable engineering patterns, secure authentication and authorization frameworks, operational standards, and governed GraphQL contracts while mentoring engineers and collaborating with Product, Architecture, DevOps, Quality Engineering, and Platform teams.

Key Responsibilities
• Lead technical decisions for the DDEV BFF platform and maintain a comprehensive understanding of the application architecture.
• Establish coding standards, engineering best practices, and reusable development patterns.
• Design GraphQL schemas and service integration patterns using Hot Chocolate.
• Develop and maintain .NET-based GraphQL services and downstream platform integrations.
• Design and implement service orchestration and aggregation capabilities.
• Implement authentication, authorization, and service governance frameworks.
• Establish secure and scalable platform architectures using appropriate resiliency patterns.
• Implement resiliency mechanisms including Circuit Breaker, Retry, and Fallback patterns.
• Build reusable platform components and shared frameworks for onboarding services and domain modules.
• Establish logging, monitoring, distributed tracing, and operational standards.
• Partner with DevOps teams on CI/CD, containerization, and deployment automation.
• Support Azure and Azure DevOps platform engineering activities.
• Contribute to infrastructure automation and Infrastructure as Code practices.
• Implement and support observability using OpenTelemetry, Application Insights, Datadog, and/or Elastic.
• Develop and maintain unit, integration, contract, and automated testing practices.
• Participate in technical planning, architecture discussions, and delivery activities.
• Mentor and coach engineers through technical reviews and ongoing guidance.
• Collaborate with Product, Architecture, Quality Engineering, Platform, and other cross-functional teams.
• Proactively identify technical risks and develop mitigation strategies.
• Contribute to architectural documentation and technical onboarding materials.
• Balance strategic platform thinking with hands-on engineering execution.

Required Qualifications
• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of experience in a Lead Engineer or Principal Engineer role.
• Expert-level experience with C#, .NET, and ASP.NET Core.
• Strong experience developing REST APIs and microservices.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and asynchronous programming.
• Strong experience with Dependency Injection.
• Expert-level or strong hands-on experience with GraphQL, preferably Hot Chocolate.
• Strong experience with Backend for Frontend (BFF) patterns.
• Experience with API governance and contract management.
• Experience with service orchestration and aggregation.
• Strong experience implementing authentication and authorization frameworks.
• Experience with OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and JWT.
• Strong knowledge of resiliency patterns including Circuit Breaker, Retry, and Fallback.
• Experience with Azure and Azure DevOps.
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Understanding of Infrastructure as Code concepts.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing practices.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Application Insights, Datadog, and/or Elastic.
• Experience with unit and integration testing, contract testing, and test automation.
• Experience with code quality and static analysis tools.
• Strong technical leadership, mentoring, coaching, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with enterprise GraphQL platforms or gateways.
• Experience developing consumer-facing digital products.
• Experience in hospitality, travel, entertainment, commerce, or media environments.
• Experience building strategic consumption platforms and scalable platform foundations.