Technical Lead

Role Description

Avalara is accelerating delivery of AI-enabled capabilities across our compliance platform to improve customer experience, increase engineering velocity, and scale global operations efficiently. As a Technical Lead, you will join a globally distributed team to architect distributed systems and embed applied AI into our core products. You will sit within the E-invoicing and Live Reporting (ELR) team and report to a Director of Engineering.

You will elevate platform reliability and raise engineering standards across the team. You'll take ownership of key platform areas, make bold technical decisions, and shape how work gets done by embedding AI into development workflows. If you are passionate about pushing the limits of innovation and creating industry-leading products, you will find a culture of Bar Raisers here who share your drive to build the future of compliance.

This role is fully remote.

#LI-REMOTE

Responsibilities

• Architect and deliver scalable, secure backend and frontend systems that support our global compliance platform.
• Lead technical design discussions and influence architectural decisions, collaborating cross-functionally to solve complex technical challenges.
• Increase development efficiency by embedding AI-assisted coding, testing, documentation, and architectural exploration into daily workflows.
• Deliver AI-enabled product features that enhance automation, data processing, and customer-facing intelligence.
• Improve deployment frequency, automated test coverage, and code quality through CI/CD and engineering best practices.
• Reduce production incidents and improve system observability through thoughtful architecture and proactive monitoring.
• Raise team performance standards through active mentoring, peer feedback, and maintaining high standards of accountability.

Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering with 12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience building scalable APIs and services with Java or .NET (C#) and maintainable frontend applications with React (TypeScript).
• Experience with distributed systems, RESTful/GraphQL APIs, system performance trade-offs, load balancing, and high availability engineering.
• Experience with AWS (Azure or GCP welcome), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab), Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases and automated testing strategies.
• Demonstrated, measurable impact from hands-on AI usage that improved business or engineering outcomes (casual AI usage is insufficient).
• Experience with LLMs and AI architectures, with experience designing and implementing agentic AI systems using frameworks like LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, or CrewAI.
• Deep knowledge of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Vector databases, prompt engineering best practices, and model selection trade-offs.
• Strong understanding of AI security risks (prompt injection, data leakage) and data privacy/compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR).

Benefits

• Total Rewards: In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
• Health & Wellness: Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
• Inclusive culture and diversity: Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture.

Company Description

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech. We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer: Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.