Head of Software Engineering (Law Firm)

Are you a software engineer who loves building things end-to-end and wants to own the technology at a growing entrepreneurial law firm

My client a highly respected plaintiff litigation firm in Stamford CT is hiring its first dedicated software engineer to take over its popular legal-tech app and build new AI-powered tools alongside a partner who is passionate about technology.

This is a role I am exclusively recruiting for. If you want a greenfield opportunity with real ownership direct access to firm leadership then this is the role for you.

Whats the Job

My client built a free iPhone app and website that sends lawyers near-instant alerts when something is filed on their court cases with a direct link to the filing. It replaced a slow vague court notification system and it has grown to roughly 500 active users mostly lawyers and reporters almost entirely through word of mouth. Today an outside vendor builds and supports it. The firm wants to bring that work in-house and that is where you come in.

You will:

- Take ownership of the existing app and backend from the vendor. Maintain it secure it scale it and manage App Store releases. There is a real opportunity to launch an Android version.

- Work directly with a partner who drives the firms technology ideas to design and build new applications some for internal use and some for the wider legal community with potential to become commercial products.

- Build AI-powered features using large language models: retrieval over case files document classification and extraction drafting assistance and citation checking.

- Turn messy legal data (scanned PDFs medical records deposition transcripts court dockets email) into clean searchable structured information.

- Integrate with the firms existing systems including Microsoft 365 and public court data sources.

- Sit with attorneys and staff learn how they work and turn what you see into prototypes and shipped software.

- Own deployment monitoring reliability and security for everything you build with sound handling of privileged and confidential client information.

This is a builder role with a short feedback loop a lot of autonomy and exposure to legal workflows that very few engineers ever get to see. Over time there may be an opportunity to grow into a broader technology leadership role at the firm.

Compensation

$150000 to $180000 base salary depending on experience plus a full benefits package. This is a full-time salaried (W2) position.

Qualifications

- 3 years building and shipping production software ideally full-stack web and/or mobile applications

- Strong generalist programmer comfortable picking up whatever the problem needs

- Strong Python and/or TypeScript with experience in a modern framework such as FastAPI Django or React

- Solid knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred) APIs and cloud deployment (Azure AWS or similar)

- Comfortable with AI-assisted coding and hands-on experience building with LLMs (prompt design RAG embeddings and vector search evaluating model output)

- A product mindset: you care whether people actually use what you build

- Clear communicator who can explain a technical tradeoff to a trial lawyer in plain English

- Comfortable working independently as the primary technical owner without a large engineering team around you

- Judgment and discretion handling sensitive confidential information

- Must be authorized to work in the US without sponsorship

Nice to have:

- iOS development experience especially navigating the Apple App Store review and release process

- Android development experience

- Document processing experience (OCR PDF manipulation text extraction from scanned records)

- Legal tech healthcare or other regulated-industry experience

- Microsoft Graph / Microsoft 365 integration experience

- Early-stage startup experience or having taken a side project or internal tool to real users

- Familiarity with security and compliance practices (SOC 2 HIPAA encryption access logging)

Location

Candidates in the New York tri-state area are preferred so they can come into the office as needed. Remote candidates with the right skills and personality will be considered.

Who are They

My client is a well-established Connecticut litigation firm handling serious personal injury and medical malpractice cases in state court along with a nationwide class action practice. Most of their work comes through referrals from other lawyers and they have built a strong reputation in the legal community. They are an unusually tech-forward firm: they built and launched their own app it has caught on with lawyers across the state and leadership is committed to using software and AI to change how legal work gets done. The varied practice gives you a wide range of real problems to solve and you will be building with people who are excited to use what you make.

To learn more apply here today or email me at:

Required Experience:

Director