Software Engineer

This role owns the technical roadmap that connects day-to-day support of mission-critical legacy applications with the organization's broader goal of becoming AI-first, identifying where AI tooling, modern integration patterns, and cloud-ready design can reduce technical debt, accelerate delivery, and improve system resilience. Evaluate, pilot, and scale AI-enabled development tooling (e.g., AI coding assistants, automated code comprehension and refactoring, AI-assisted testing and documentation) to accelerate legacy modernization and improve day-to-day delivery.

Job Description:

Job Overview

The Developer IV leads technical modernization efforts across Wheels' application landscape, with a mandate to evolve legacy systems toward a modern, AI-enabled architecture. This role owns the technical roadmap that connects day-to-day support of mission-critical legacy applications with the organization's broader goal of becoming AI-first, identifying where AI tooling, modern integration patterns, and cloud-ready design can reduce technical debt, accelerate delivery, and improve system resilience.

The role blends hands-on technical leadership of the legacy systems programming team with a forward-looking architecture mandate: evaluating, piloting, and scaling AI-assisted development practices, and building the case for, and executing against, a modernized technology stack.

Key Responsibilities: Essential Functions
Technical & Team Leadership

• Serve as technical lead for the legacy systems programming team, guiding, reviewing, and directing technical work to ensure business needs and modernization goals are met.
• Act as technical team leader on projects, coordinating development and modernization efforts from architecture design through implementation.
• Instruct, coach, and mentor team members, including on AI-assisted development tools and modern engineering practices, to raise the team's overall technical capability.
• Participate in scrum activities with Web Development and broader Engineering teams to align legacy and modern workstreams.

Architecture Evolution & AI-First Modernization

• Own and evolve the technical roadmap for migrating legacy systems functionality toward modern, API-first, cloud-ready architecture.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Engineering leadership to define target-state architecture and sequence modernization work into deliverable, low-risk increments.
• Evaluate, pilot, and scale AI-enabled development tooling (e.g., AI coding assistants, automated code comprehension and refactoring, AI-assisted testing and documentation) to accelerate legacy modernization and improve day-to-day delivery.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI/ML within business applications themselves, not just the development process, such as intelligent automation, anomaly detection, and decision support.
• Champion replacement of point-to-point integrations with standardized, event-driven, and API-based integration patterns.
• Define, track, and report modernization KPIs (e.g., deployment frequency, change failure rate, legacy footprint reduction, technical debt trend) to demonstrate measurable progress.
• Ensure all AI tooling and automation adopted by the team complies with Wheels' data governance, security, and compliance standards.

Application Development & Support

• Work with business users to understand requirements, issues, and business processes, translating them into sound technical designs.
• Develop, test, maintain, and support business application programs, adhering to departmental standards while identifying opportunities to modernize as work is touched.
• Perform quality assurance testing for all created or modified programs, plus any other applications affected.
• Analyze production applications to isolate problems, determine more efficient methods, and surface modernization candidates.
• Research and implement problem resolutions in a timely and effective manner.
• Maintain current knowledge of standard languages, coding methods, and emerging AI-assisted development practices; recommend enhancements to departmental standards as needed.

Other Duties

• Document technical requirements and create technical designs for self and others based on business requirements, including target-state architecture diagrams.
• Ensure the quality of software implemented by the team meets Wheels' quality standards.
• Provide project and system documentation per department standards.
• Present modernization progress, risks, and recommendations to technical and business stakeholders.
• Respond to on-call emergencies pertaining to recent application/module enhancements as needed.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Leadership Responsibilities

This position carries technical leadership responsibility for the legacy systems programming team, guiding, reviewing, and directing technical work, along with architecture-level influence over Wheels' legacy-to-modern application roadmap. This role is expected to shape how AI-assisted development is adopted across the broad