OverviewWe're hiring! Kemin is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our team in Des Moines, Iowa. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will serve as the highest-level engineering execution contributor on the delivery team - the technical anchor for large project delivery, engineering quality, and team capability. You will lead complex projects end-to-end, run design reviews in collaboration with the Software Architect, enforce engineering standards, mentor all engineers, and own the team's CI/CD and DevOps practice. Where the Architect defines how the team builds, the SE3 is responsible for delivering it.
Local candidates in Des Moines, Iowa are preferred. This role is hybrid, with two remote days and three in-office days each week.
ResponsibilitiesSoftware Architechture & Development- Lead the design and development of complex features across .NET services, Angular and middleware layers, aligned with Software Architect standards; author technical design documentation and present to the Architect for validation.
- Write and review production-grade code; set the engineering quality bar; enforce coding standards, secure coding practices, and integration patterns defined by the Architect.
- Apply advanced prompt engineering to direct AI tools across code generation, debugging, refactoring, and documentation tasks; evaluate AI agent output for architectural fit and take responsibility for all committed code.
Technical Leadership & Mentoring- Serve as the primary technical mentor for SE1 and SE2 engineers; lead onboarding, provide structured code review feedback, and actively support career growth.
- Lead design review meetings for assigned projects; proactively schedule Architect check-ins to validate scalability and design decisions before committing.
- Facilitate team knowledge-sharing sessions and identify skill gaps; coach engineers on prompt engineering, AI tool usage, and responsible AI practices.
DevOps, CI/CD & Platform Engineering- Build, maintain, and continuously improve Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines implementing pipeline templates and standards.
- Implement and maintain Infrastructure within Azure that follows approved architectural patterns; own observability solutions across team services.
- Enforce deployment standards, branching strategies, and environment promotion gates as established by the Software Architect.
Testing, Quality, & Reliability- Enforce the testing strategy defined by the Software Architect; lead quality execution across all projects including unit, integration, end-to-end, and performance testing.
- Lead quality improvement initiatives; track and drive reduction of defect rates, test coverage gaps, and reliability incidents.
- Conduct performance engineering and capacity planning for critical enterprise and data pipeline services.
Stakeholder Engagement & Technical Strategy- Serve as the primary engineering liaison between the delivery team and the Software Architect; ensure architectural direction is understood and implemented correctly across all engineers.
- Represent the engineering team in discussions with IT leadership, project managers, and business stakeholders; translate technical constraints and delivery status clearly.
- Contribute delivery feasibility insight and ground-level engineering perspective to the Architect's technology evaluations and standards decisions
Continuous Learning- Maintain deep expertise in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, .NET roadmap, and AI tooling evolution including emerging agent frameworks and prompt engineering best practices.
- Evaluate new AI development tools and agent capabilities; assess fitness for the team's workflow and bring recommendations to the Software Architect
- Represent Kemin IT in relevant professional communities; bring external best practices and emerging trends back to the team.
Qualifications- Education and Experience:
- Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related field with 7+ years of experience including 2+ as a tech lead
- Expert-level C# / .NET proficiency with a track record of building and delivering production enterprise systems.
- Deep Angular and TypeScript expertise including performance optimization and enterprise-scale module architecture.
- Expert SQL Server skills: schema design, performance tuning, high availability, and disaster recovery concepts.
- Hands-on Azure DevOps mastery: pipeline authoring, release strategies, and environment management.
- Strong prompt engineering skills; experience directing AI tools for complex development tasks and evaluating AI agent output for quality and fit.
- Extensive knowledge of Microsoft Azure, including Azure resource provisioning, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), and resource governance/management (e.g., RBAC, policies, tagging, cost management).
- Leads technical direction for the team; formally mentors all engineers; owns onboarding and capability building; coaches on prompt engineering and responsible AI use.
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