Senior Software Engineer in Chicago, Illinois at AHEAD

AHEAD is on the hunt for an exceptional Senior Software Engineer to help build Hatch, our flagship platform. We’re a leading IT services provider, trusted by some of the world’s largest companies to design, build, run, and modernize their most important technology across cloud, data, AI, and security.

Hatch is an advanced platform for IT lifecycle management, renewal, procurement, and logistics, giving enterprises real-time visibility and control over their IT assets, orders, contracts, and inventory across thousands of sites. Unity, its sibling platform, extends those capabilities to streamline our own operations and service delivery. You’ll join a progressive engineering team that lives on the forefront of technology. We build real products, adopt new tools early, sweat the details, and trade ideas constantly. You will learn here, and you’ll have the autonomy to make a visible impact fast.

We’re far less interested in the languages on your résumé than in how you think. You’ll own meaningful problems end to end, starting from the user and the business outcome. You’ll design, build, and ship full-stack solutions, make sound architectural calls, and stay accountable for quality from first commit to production. Our stack today is Elixir and Phoenix, but we care far more that you can pick up whatever a problem demands and bring strong engineering judgment to it.

AI has changed what great engineering looks like, and we’ve leaned in. We expect engineers to use AI tools and coding agents fluently to prototype, explore, and accelerate the routine, so that human time goes to what matters: framing the right problem, designing the system, exercising judgment, and verifying that what ships is correct and secure. We’re not looking for people who fear the tools, or who trust them blindly. We’re looking for engineers who wield them with taste.

• Reach for AI to move faster on scaffolding, refactors, tests, and research, then review every line like you own it, because you do.
• Spend your judgment where it counts: architecture, product decisions, edge cases, security, and correctness.
• Help push the practice forward with better tooling, prompts, and workflows that make the whole team more effective.

• Own features and problems end to end, from understanding the user’s need through design, delivery, and support.
• Design and build full-stack solutions for internal and public web applications, making pragmatic architectural decisions along the way.
• Work at high leverage with AI tools and agents, then review, test, and harden everything you ship.
• Engage across the full development life cycle: analysis, implementation, integration, testing, debugging, and support.
• Lead code reviews and raise the bar on quality, mentoring other engineers as you go.
• Work directly with end users and stakeholders to understand the business problem behind each request.
• Help set estimates and milestones, balance technical risk against cost and deadlines, and keep work on track.
• Help drive the future roadmap of the engineering team and AHEAD.

• 5+ years building and shipping software (7+ preferred), with a track record of owning significant work end to end.
• Strong engineering judgment. You know what “good” looks like and can tell solid solutions from shaky ones, including code an AI wrote.
• A product mindset: you start from the user and the outcome, and you sweat the details that make software useful.
• Fluency with modern AI development tools and coding agents, paired with the discipline to verify, test, and own everything you ship.
• Stack-agnostic adaptability, so you pick up new languages and frameworks quickly. (Our stack today is Elixir and Phoenix; prior experience is welcome but not required.)
• A strong foundation in software design, architecture, and the practices that keep systems reliable, including testing, continuous integration, code review, and containerization.
• Clear, direct communication, so you can express intent precisely to both teammates and the tools you work with.
• The instincts of a senior engineer: you lead projects, mentor others, and raise the level of the people around you.
• A drive to keep learning and to help shape how the team builds.

• Join a progressive team that lives on the forefront of technology, where innovation and curiosity are the norm.
• We invest seriously in modern tooling, including the best AI tools, and we’re always looking for the next approach that makes the team better.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and an environment where work-life balance is more than just a catchphrase.
• You’ll play a crucial role in a platform that enterprises rely on to manage their IT, working alongside a talented and motivated team.

AHEAD recognizes the value of diverse perspectives. In our ever-evolving tech landscape, the insights you bring from your own journey can reshape our collective experience. If you’ve had experiences, both good and challenging, with other platforms, technologies, or ways of working, they’ll become an asset here. Your voice will help refine our products and the way we build them, keeping both innovative, intuitive, and industry-leading.

Please include links to anything that shows how you build, whether that’s repositories, projects you led, or pull requests that reflect the breadth of your work. If you’ve built something interesting with AI tools or agents, we’d love to see that too.