Lead Software Engineer

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together. Role Summary / Overview At Appian, we are passionate about building a culture of innovation—great people, great software. As a Lead Software Engineer (LSE) for the Appian Usage Reporting and Analytics (AURA) team, you will serve as the primary technical lead and advisor, commanding significant influence across teams and departments. You will own the architectural evolution of our near real-time centralized logging and analytics platform. Your mission is to drive the design and execution of high-performance, distributed data systems that handle millions of daily requests, ensuring our platform is built with industry-leading performance, reliability, and scalability. As a force multiplier, you will not only deliver complex projects but also raise the technical bar for the entire organization through mentorship and principled decision-making. Key Responsibilities Architectural Leadership: Own major infrastructure subsystems and drive the technical roadmap for the AURA platform, ensuring it can handle high-volume, real-time data processing. Execution & Delivery: Lead complex, cross-functional projects to impact, managing multiple initiatives simultaneously while ensuring high-quality, production-grade delivery. Mentorship & Coaching: Serve as an exceptional coach to all engineers, providing guidance on design reviews, code quality, and professional growth. Innovation & AI: Champion AI-first engineering adoption, integrating generative AI into the SDLC and leveraging AI to gain deeper insights from product usage logs. Operational Excellence: Manage the availability, latency, and efficiency of core services, building automation and alerting to prevent problem recurrence and reduce toil. Influence: Consistently question the status quo to drive change and new initiatives, acting as an advocate for best practices and SDLC improvements across the department. Collaboration: Partner with Product Managers, Executive stakeholders, and other engineering leads to maintain the team's vision and prioritize high-impact customer benefits. Required Qualifications Experience: 8 to 10+ years of relevant software development experience in product or platform organizations. Technical Depth: Expert-level competency in Java and building scalable, high-volume systems within distributed environments. Cloud Expertise: Extensive experience with AWS services (Lambda, S3, Aurora, Athena, Glue) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform). Architectural Mastery: Proven experience in designing and influencing technical direction for large-scale, real-time data systems and cloud-native architectures. Education: B.E. in Computer Science or a related technical discipline. Leadership Track Record: Demonstrated ability to lead technical teams, mentor senior engineers, and deliver measurable outcomes in a mature SDLC. Tools and Resources Training and Development: During onboarding, we focus on equipping new hires with the skills and knowledge for success through department-specific training. Continuous learning is a central focus at Appian, with dedicated mentorship and the First-Friend program being widely utilized resources for new hires. Growth Opportunities: Appian provides a diverse array of growth and development opportunities, including our leadership program tailored for new and aspiring managers, a comprehensive library of specialized department training through Appian University, skills based training, and tuition reimbursement for those aiming to advance their education. This commitment ensures that employees have access to a holistic range of develop