Tech Lead Software Engineer

• AI Platforms Pod
  In the AI Platforms Pod, you’ll set technical direction for the core platforms that enable Southwest’s AI and machine learning capabilities. You’ll lead system design for distributed cloud services and APIs, ensuring platform components are scalable, secure, and reusable across Teams. This role includes leading design reviews, raising engineering standards across testing, CI/CD, and reliability, and partnering closely with Product Teams to deliver roadmap outcomes while managing technical debt. You’ll work hands‑on with AWS services, Infrastructure as Code, event‑driven integrations, and observability tools to ensure platform services are production‑ready and easy to operate. Your leadership helps create a strong foundation that allows Teams across the Company to develop, deploy, and experiment with AI confidently and at scale.

• AI Platform Operations Pod
  In the AI Platform Operations Pod, you’ll lead advanced support engineering for AI and agentic platforms, bridging the gap between platform development and operational excellence. You’ll guide L2/L3 engineering efforts—driving automation, improving reliability patterns, and shaping how platform issues are detected, triaged, and resolved. This role focuses on setting a high technical bar for support engineering through observability, automation‑first practices, and “shift‑left” improvements that reduce operational load over time. You’ll mentor a growing Team of Engineers and help define effective L1/L2/L3 handoff models, while working closely with Platform and Product Partners to ensure AI systems continue to deliver value as they evolve. Your work ensures Southwest’s AI platforms remain dependable, resilient, and ready to scale.

• Provide accurate development estimates in support of feasibility assessments and planned development activities
• Create, maintain, review and approve application designs in collaboration with Solution Architects and shared services Teams, ensuring alignment to the appropriate solution architectures and taking tradeoffs into account
• Develop, maintain, and review software with a focus on quality and maintainability
• Develop, maintain, review, and execute unit, functional, and integration tests with a focus on automation and test-driven development
• Provide technical oversight for performance testing, ensuring plan and outcomes align to expected non-functional requirements
• Plan and oversee application deployment activities and sequencing in non-production and production environments
• Investigate new technologies that could improve the applications and development activities
• Identify and resolve technical debt as appropriate, weighing the development effort against the value returned
• Mentor and coach Development Team on relevant architecture, design, development, and operations topics
• Evaluate code to ensure that it is valid, is properly structured, meets industry standards, and is compatible with browsers, devices, or operating systems
• May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders

• Advanced knowledge of software development methodologies, practices, concepts, and technologies
• Advanced knowledge of at least one programming language and at least general knowledge of one or more additional programming languages
• Knowledge of project management methodology and principles
• Ability to demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving abilities with a proactive mindset to get ahead of issues
• Skilled in communication with ability to articulate a clear direction and priorities on ideas, approaches, concepts, options, risks, impacts, and recommendations to technical, non-technical, and Leadership audiences with ability to adapt the message accordingly
• Ability to articulate the technical implementation and how it provides business value
• Ability to lead ideation, presentation, and group-thinking sessions
• Ability to influence effectively without authority up through Senior Leadership levels to achieve desired business outcomes
• Ability to lead multiple efforts concurrently, whether administrative or project related, while maintaining a successful level of completion in their own work
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, Team-based, Customer service-oriented environment

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training

Experience

• Required: Expert level experience, expansive and far reaching knowledge in software engineering

  • 8-10 years of relevant work-related experience

  • System design for distributed cloud services; API-first platform design

  • AWS core services + networking/security fundamentals

  • Hands-on delivery with CI/CD, IaC (CDK/Terraform/CloudFormation)

  • Observability and reliability engineering (SLOs, tracing, incident response)

  • Data integrations (Kafka/events), S3/lake patterns, warehouse interactions

  • AI platform integration patterns with SageMaker/Bedrock and agentic workflows

• Preferred: Experience in:
  • Kubernetes/EKS/ECS proficiency

  • Service mesh / advanced networking patterns

  • LLM evaluation harnesses and guardrail implementations

  • Performance tuning for high-throughput inference APIs

  • Mentoring and leading engineers through architecture tradeoffs

• Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information
• Ability to work extended hours as needed