Software Engineer in Chicago, Illinois at AHEAD

AHEAD is on the hunt for a sharp, motivated Software Engineer, early in their career and ready to do real work from day one, to help build Hatch. 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. This is a place to be noticed for your work and your talent, not your years of experience, and to learn an enormous amount, fast.

We care more about how you think and how quickly you learn than about the languages on your résumé. You’ll start by contributing to real features and grow toward owning them end to end, writing, testing, and shipping full-stack code with support from experienced engineers. Our stack today is Elixir and Phoenix. No prior experience with them is required. We care that you bring solid fundamentals and the drive to pick up whatever a problem demands.

AI has changed what great engineering looks like, and it’s a fantastic time to start your career here. From day one you’ll use AI tools and coding agents to write, explore, and understand code faster, while building the most important skill of all: the judgment to review what they produce and know when it’s right. We’re not looking for people who lean on the tools blindly. We’re looking for people eager to learn to wield them with care, and we’ll help you get great at both the fundamentals and the modern way of working.

• Use AI to learn faster and contribute sooner on scaffolding, tests, and research, then review what it produces like you own it.
• Build strong fundamentals: clean code, testing, debugging, and how real systems fit together.
• Grow your judgment with regular feedback from senior engineers who care about helping you level up.

• Contribute to features across our platforms, and grow toward owning them end to end, with support from experienced engineers.
• Build full-stack functionality for internal and public web applications, learning to make sound design decisions along the way.
• Use AI tools and agents to work and learn faster, then review, test, and harden what you ship.
• Take part in the full development life cycle: implementation, testing, debugging, and support.
• Take part in code reviews, giving and receiving feedback, as one of the fastest ways to grow.
• Work directly with teammates and end users to understand the business problem behind each request.
• Write reliable, well-tested code and fix issues promptly.
• Pick up new languages, tools, and concepts as you go. Curiosity is the job.

• Some foundation in software development, whether through a CS degree, a bootcamp, internships, personal projects, or equivalent self-taught experience.
• Developing engineering judgment. You’re learning what “good” looks like and how to tell solid solutions from shaky ones, including code an AI wrote.
• The beginnings of a product mindset: you care about the user and the outcome, not just closing the ticket.
• Interest in using modern AI development tools well, paired with the instinct to verify and test what you ship.
• Comfortable writing code in at least one modern language, and eager to learn Elixir, Phoenix, and whatever else a problem calls for. (No prior Elixir experience required.)
• A growing foundation in software design and good practices, including testing, version control, and code review.
• Clear, direct communication and a willingness to ask good questions.
• Curiosity and drive. You love to learn, and you see your work through to the end.
• Activity on GitHub, a portfolio, or projects you can show us is a big plus.

• You’ll do real work that ships and reaches real users, with no busywork.
• You’ll learn constantly, with mentorship from a team that’s always on the forefront of technology.
• We invest seriously in modern tooling, including the best AI tools, and in helping you grow.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and an environment where work-life balance is more than just a catchphrase.

AHEAD recognizes the value of fresh perspectives. The questions you ask and the ideas you bring, shaped by your own path into software, help us see our products and our process with new eyes. We want people who are curious, kind, and hungry to grow, and who’ll speak up as they learn.

Please include links to anything that shows how you build, whether that’s repositories, school or personal projects, or things you’ve made with AI tools. We care far more about what you’ve built and how you think than about the length of your résumé.