Lead Developer

Contract-to-Hire • $50/hr Competitive Pay • Full-Time Remote About this RoleWe're looking for a Lead Developer to own the technical health of our production applications. This role is a 6-month contract with the potential for full-time employment at the end of the period. This role runs on judgment and diligence: someone who reviews every pull request properly; chases down the vague bug instead of closing it; keeps HIPAA/FERPA and data-security implications in mind; communicates clearly when things go sideways; and never ships "probably fine." You'll weigh in on product tradeoffs (not just implementation), as good technical judgment means communicating why something is built, not just how. You'll be the person the team escalates decisions to. We will entrust you to make the final technical call and own the outcome. What We're Hiring ForCharacter first. Conscientiousness and follow-through matter as much as - if not more than - raw technical firepower. We need someone who is calm under incident pressure, especially with a client watching, and who can make sound technical calls without waiting for permission. Architecture intuition. You need to be able to hold the whole system in your head: how the pieces connect, where the risk lives, and what breaks what. This is what makes you able to review others' work, catch problems early, and make the right tradeoffs under pressure. Stack fluency. You should be comfortable enough across our stack to review code knowledgeably and course-correct a team member, but you don't need to be the best programmer on the team. Our senior developers are where we look for deep, top-tier stack expertise, and you will be their guide. Responsibilities Leadership & ownership Serve as the final technical authority, the person the team escalates to when something is unclear, broken, or high-risk.Own production: make the final call on releases, architecture decisions, and how issues get resolved.Run sprint planning and keep work moving, assigning, reviewing, and course-correcting daily so quality holds up under deadline.Set technical standards and mentor developers, catching problems before they ship.Translate business goals into a technical plan and communicate tradeoffs and timelines clearly to non-technical stakeholders.Conduct thorough, consistent code reviews, every PR, every week, no exceptions for busy stretches. Compliance & data handling (required, ongoing) Track HIPAA/FERPA implications and multi-tenant data-isolation risk across change requests. You don't need to arrive as an expert, as we can provide some training, but you do need to care about it. Candidates with prior experience will be given additional consideration in the application process. Incident response (required) Own incident response: diagnosing under pressure, making judgment calls with incomplete information, and communicating status clearly to the client and team while things are still unresolved. Architecture & infrastructure Hold the overall system architecture in your head across both the modern and legacy stacks.Own CI/CD and the release process end to end. This is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.Working familiarity with GCP and Terraform is a real plus, since that's what our infrastructure runs on, but it's not a dealbreaker. It just shortens the ramp-up. Technical fluency (threshold level, enough to review and course-correct) Modern stack: Next.js (App Router, server components/actions), React, TypeScript.Legacy/production stack: PHP (Laravel), including Eloquent, migrations, queues, jobs, and middleware, plus SQL databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL).Comfortable enough in both to review code, spot a bad pattern, and guide a developer toward a better one. Deep hands-on mastery of either stack is not the bar for this role.Comfortable leveraging AI tools and coding agents as part of the development workflow, and, critically, comfortable being the final human reviewer of AI-generated output. Requirements2+ years as a hands-on tech lead, meaning you were the person others escalated to, you owned production, made the final calls, and reviewed the team's code daily. (This is distinct from people-management experience without technical ownership.)Demonstrated ability to hold a full system's architecture in your head and make sound tradeoffs under pressure.Track record of consistent, high-quality code review and mentorship.Comfortable being the final decision-maker on incidents, with a client watching, with no one to escalate to above you.Working knowledge of HIPAA/FERPA and multi-tenant data-handling considerations, or clear evidence you pick this up fast and take it seriously.CI/CD ownership experience, you've run releases end to end, not just triggered them.Threshold-level fluency across our modern (Next.js/React/TypeScript) and legacy (Laravel/PHP/SQL) stacks. Nice to HavesFamiliarity with GCP and Terraform.Experience straddling a modern JS frontend and a Laravel backend.SaaS / multi-tenant application experience. Note: We look for deep, hands-on expertise in a single stack (Laravel or the modern JS stack) in our Senior Backend Developer roles, not this one. If that's your strength, ask us about those openings instead. Benefits for Fulll-Time EmployeesVanguard 401(k) with the following match: 100% match of first 3%, 50% match of next 2%17 days PTO plus 13 paid holidaysCompany health insurance plan: the firm pays 50% of the employee's monthly premium; dependents added must be paid 100% by the employeeCompany dental and vision insurance plans (firm offers these plans but pays no premiums)Maternity and paternity leave All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.