JOB DESCRIPTION

The University of Washington is one of the world’s preeminent public universities in impact and funding. Since 1972, the UW has continued to receive more externally sponsored research funding than any other U.S. public university and we are one of the few universities in the U.S. with total research funding nearing two billion. That funding drives crucial, ground-breaking research that transforms lives around the globe. In the Office of Research at UW, we take pride in creating an outstanding climate of support for UW researchers that helps them compete and succeed. However, research administration and regulation is growing in complexity by the day. Our mission in ORIS (Office of Research Information Services) is to reduce that administrative burden by streamlining and automating information services so researchers can spend more time researching.
The Lead Software Engineering for .Net (.Net Tech Lead) will ensure efficient delivery and effective support for University research by designing, building, and supporting some of UW’s most critical software services. This evolving suite of solutions is used by award-winning faculty and staff to perform administrative activities including submission of funding applications for consideration, routing them electronically for approval, managing detailed multi-year budgets for grant and contract proposals, ensuring regulatory compliance, and more.
The engineering component of the position consists of novel product development, vendor product configuration, and integration. This position will grow and evolve ORIS’s software engineering best practices and standards; lead and collaborate on the strategic direction of .Net engineering; ensure the tactical implementation of that strategic direction across products; lead and mentor a wide range of staff; and foster accessible, secure, and user-centric interaction design. Operations consist of supporting a range of software components, infrastructure, integrations, and services, some of which target 24/7/365 availability.
Successful candidates must have a blend of software development background and demonstrated leadership qualities in order to ensure we provide continuous value delivery to our stakeholders in a sustainable way. This technical leadership may be expressed in diverse ways, connecting to the variety of styles and cultures represented within the Office of Research and across UW.

The .Net Tech Lead provides strategic technical leadership throughout the planning, implementation, and operational phases. A successful person in this position must:

• Lead, mentor, coach, and collaborate with multiple teams of diverse staff including junior and senior engineering staff as well as technical leads, product owners, and project managers across teams on software engineering and its supporting disciplines across legacy and modern codebases
• Work closely with other tech leads, software engineers, and non-technical staff both inside ORIS and with partners to ensure the stability, security, and sustainability of both legacy systems and new ones
• Works with full stack of technology in the AWS cloud, including user interfaces, monolith, microservices, APIs, and cloud infrastructure (set up as infrastructure as code)
• Align .Net engineering implementations with overall ORIS IT operational goals and business objectives as outlined by ORIS program portfolio in order to support the Office of Research in supporting the UW’s $1.7+ billion research enterprise
• Lead, plan, and advise on the strategic and tactical direction of all facets of .Net engineering across a broad technology stack, from novel software development and operations to automated testing and integration with third-party services and tools

As a technical leader responsible for ensuring the strategic success of .Net engineering, this position advances the Office of Research’s mission to support the integration of electronic research information systems. This will reduce the administrative burden on researchers across the University by improving the amount of time researchers can spend on researching; improving University compliance; and ensuring that the University can continue to be at the forefront of academic research.

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related Field

6 Years of experience in software engineering to include at least the following minimum professional experience within those 6 years:

• 5 years hands-on experience as an individual contributor to software application design, implementation, maintenance, and operation in accordance with industry standards and security best practices using: C#, .NET framework (including Entity Framework) ; SQL Server and document-oriented databases, including database schema design and writing stored procedures/functions; RESTful APIs; message-queue architectures; Azure DevOps Server ; CI/CD pipelines in for Git repositories, and source controlling artifacts via Git, in alignment with common branching strategies and workflows; IIS management
• 3 years of demonstrated history of progressive responsibility in leading software engineering teams with diverse backgrounds and abilities in the areas identified above
• 3 years of demonstrated experience working with C#/.Net in AWS (including experience with most of the following: Lambda, S3, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, EC2, Route53, Elastic Container Service (ECS), and RDS)
• Demonstrated ability to communicate clearly and effectively in both oral and written mediums with individuals and groups in order to socialize information and knowledge with a diverse group of colleagues
• Demonstrated ease in technical and non-technical review as both reviewer and reviewee in order to facilitate collaborative group activities such as change control and pull request review

EXPERIENCE DESIRED:

Experience with …

• Object, data, metadata, process, and/or information modeling
• Familiarity with ASP.Net MVC and OData
• Application performance monitoring and management
• OpenAPI Specification (Swagger)
• Automated testing
• Event-driven, distributed architecture
• Real-time data to support business intelligence reporting
• Postman API Platfor m
• Git Version Control
• JavaScript, including Node.js, npm, AngularJS and Angular (2+)
• MuleSoft Anypoint Platform / RAML
• Common content exchange formats, including Markdown, YAML, and JSON
• Elasticsearch / OpenSearch
• Cloud-native application development (containers and containers orchestration, machine learning, function as a service)
• Secure web application development practices
• Lean/Agile software development methodologies
• Working in higher education and/or research administration

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategic Technical Leadership - 35%

• Lead .Net ORIS engineers (and other ORIS staff) in understanding key concepts, industry best practices, and organizational principles, strategies, and conventions related to software engineering via mentoring, meetings, hands-on learning, code review, and documentation to ensure ORIS products are stable, secure, and sustainable in the cloud; provide functional and non-functional requirements based on these practices
• Collaborate with organization leadership and staff to understand and advise on the strategic direction of .Net applications so that ORIS can identify, understand, and assess risks and opportunities with respect to the products and strategies they maintain and develop
• Develop technical diagrams, roadmaps, and other planning documents to account for the risks and opportunities assessed to be most essential to maximizing the value delivered by their products, and to advancing the organization’s mission, principles, and strategies; groom and sequence initiatives and epics that advance these approaches
• Work in collaboration with UW-IT and a wide range of other campus partners to integrate with a variety of enterprise-scale solutions

Design and Build - 35%

• Write high quality novel software, develop against legacy codebases, and instantiate integrations with internal and externals APIs
• Lead engineers in working collaboratively with the multiple cross-functional teams to breakdown and implement initiatives and features in the problem spaces while maintaining alignment with strategies defined by organization leadership and industry best practices
• Collaborate with stakeholders to mature software engineering and operations, services, processes, and practices that support a wide range of software applications
• Participate in and promote a culture of review by encouraging and engaging in technical and non-technical review as both reviewer and reviewee to build software according to recommended and existing development methodologies including design patterns, including Infrastructure as Code, DevSecOps, GitOps, etc.

Operations - 10%

• Ensure regular maintenance tasks and security updates are completed in a timely fashion both individually and with other engineers
• Ensure software and infrastructure is built, operated, and terminated in accordance with university policy and industry recommended security best practices
• Participate in incident response by triaging and troubleshooting emerging incidents and escalating issues of broader concern to key stakeholders
• Work to ensure services and systems are observable, performant, and highly available

Professional Development - 10%

• Mentor and advise diverse staff at all levels of the organization on software engineering and operations best practices
• Engage in professional development opportunities and share knowledge attained with other staff

• Maintain an awareness of industry, institutional, and organizational trends, best practices, standard solutions, and constraintsBecome familiar with research administration in an R1 university setting in order to streamline its supporting business processes

Administrative Duties - 10%

• Attend recurring organization meetings and one-on-ones with a supervisor.
• Engage in unplanned communications
• Participate in recurring HR processes

LEAD RESPONSIBILITIES:

Under the general guidance of the Technology Manager, this position will serve as the organization’s technical lead for .Net engineering. In coordination and collaboration with other lead software engineers, architects, technology managers, product owners, and project managers the position may assign and direct the work of others, review work assignments, provide performance evaluation input, and/or provide hiring or corrective action input.