Lead Application Developer

Job Description

Lead Application Developer

Location: Houston, TX (onsite 4 days per week, 1 day remote) | Type: Direct hire, full-time | Pay: $150,000 to $160,000

About the Role

You'll take technical ownership of the corporate application portfolio and lead the implementation of a new Content Services Platform spanning workflow automation, document management, and robotic process automation. This is the senior hands-on technical role on a small, high-trust application development team, reporting to the VP of Data & Applications.

You'll design the platform, build it, and decide how it integrates with the rest of the environment. From there, you'll own the health of the applications that support Finance, HR, Asset Management, Client Experience, Leasing, Legal, and Construction & Design.

This is a true lead role. You'll set standards, review code, make build versus buy decisions, and serve as the technical voice with business stakeholders and vendors. You'll also mentor a small group of developers and help shape how the team works.

If you want to be one of a hundred developers working on someone else's platform, this isn't that role. If you want to be the person the business turns to when something important needs to be built, it's worth a look.

What You'll Do

• Lead the end-to-end implementation of the new Content Services Platform, including workflow automation, document management, and RPA build-out
• Own architecture and technical design decisions across the corporate application portfolio, and document them clearly so others can pick them up
• Write production code, this is a hands-on lead role, not a management track in disguise
• Set and enforce engineering standards across code review, testing, release process, and technical documentation
• Partner with the Data & Digital Services team on upstream and downstream integrations with the Enterprise Data Platform and Digital Experience Platform
• Implement, enhance, and support the custom, SaaS, and COTS applications behind Finance, HR, Asset Management, Client Experience, Leasing, Legal, and Construction & Design
• Write and tune SQL, and maintain the RDBMS databases that support those applications in production
• Stand up tooling that supports AI and machine learning prediction work requested by business stakeholders
• Mentor developers on the team and act as the escalation point for the toughest production issues
• Manage technical relationships with platform vendors and hold them accountable to what they sold

What You Need

• 8+ years building and supporting web-based applications in a midsize, multi-department organization, including at least 2 years as a lead, principal, or senior-most developer on a team
• Deep hands-on experience with Node.js, React, and Python
• Production experience with a BPMN workflow engine, ideally Camunda, and with an RPA platform, ideally UiPath
• Solid SQL skills and real production experience maintaining SQL Server or Oracle databases
• Experience delivering on a content services platform covering workflow automation, document management, and RPA
• Comfort across the broader Microsoft stack, including Power Automate, O365, Teams, SharePoint, and Power BI
• Track record of delivering with Agile and standard SDLC practices
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, advanced degree is a plus

Nice to Have

• Experience in commercial real estate or property management
• Background in REST-based microservices and API-first architecture
• Exposure to AI and machine learning integration in enterprise applications
• Mobile application experience across iOS and Android

Why This Role

You get a clean slate on a platform that will touch every department in the company, real decision-making authority, and a business that will actually use what you build. The team is small enough that your work is visible, and large enough that it matters.

Who Thrives Here

Someone who likes owning the whole problem, not just one slice of it. You're comfortable sitting with a Leasing director to understand their workflow in the morning and debugging a Kubernetes deployment in the afternoon. You have opinions about how things should be built, and you can explain them to people who don't write code.