Lead Software Engineer (AI Developer Tooling & Enablement)
Location: Beaverton, OR
Contract length: 12 months
Schedule: Hybrid in Beaverton, OR (WFH on Fridays)
Pay: $72-74/hr, DOE
The Planet Group is looking for a Lead Software Engineer (AI Developer Tooling & Enablement) to join our well-known retail brand on a roughly 12-month contract! This role is 40 hours per week and will work a hybrid schedule in Beaverton, OR, working from home on Fridays.
Lead Software Engineer (AI Developer Tooling & Enablement) Qualifications:
- Business or financial education (e.g., MBA) or equivalent experience supporting vendor and cost management is a plus
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated principal?level technical leadership
- Deep expertise in GitHub administration, governance, and automation at enterprise scale
- Strong background in platform engineering and developer experience tooling
- Hands?on experience with AI?assisted development tools and emerging AI platforms
- Proven ability to design and maintain automation frameworks where vendor APIs are limited
- Excellent cross?functional communication skills, including the ability to translate technical and financial concepts for senior stakeholders
- Experience with Backstage, internal developer portals, and platform extensibility is a plus
- Bonus points for familiarity with SCIM, identity management, and enterprise access controls
- Exposure to open?source contribution models and inner?source practices is a plus
- GitHub administration experience is required; GitHub certification is a plus
- Familiarity with CI/CD
- Cursor coding experience
- Familiarity with Golang and Python
- Strong leadership qualities, communication skills and collaborative in nature
- Experience with container-based development on Kubernetes would stand out
- Understanding of platform engineering is a huge plus
Lead Software Engineer (AI Developer Tooling & Enablement) Description:
- Own the technical strategy, architecture, and execution for AI?powered developer tooling used by thousands of engineers globally, while partnering closely with Product, Security, Legal, Finance, and Vendor Management
- Fill a critical capability gap by unifying platform engineering excellence, AI tooling expertise, and enterprise systems leadership into a single accountable technical owner
- Serve as the lead engineer and technical steward for the AI Dev Tooling & Enablement squad, owning architecture, administration, and long?term technical direction for GitHub, Cursor, and Claude
- Establish and evolve technical standards, patterns, and best practices for AI developer tooling at enterprise scale
- Lead multiple proof?of?concept and incubation efforts central to the client's AI development strategy, including background agents running on self?hosted runners, Claude Code evaluation and comparative analysis, and “Bring Your Own Model” (BYOM) enablement pathways
- Design and implement SCIM?based integrations (e.g., for Cursor) to support automated team management, access control, and accurate cost allocation and chargeback
- Translate experimental AI capabilities into secure, supportable, production?ready platforms
- Act as squad lead and governance owner for all GitHub and Cursor initiatives, including GitHub Copilot and adjacent AI dev tooling (e.g., MCP servers and system integrations)
- Provide end?to?end product support and operational ownership for developer tooling used by thousands of engineers
- Partner directly with vendors such as GitHub, Anysphere and Anthropic to drive the client's requirements, roadmap alignment, and issue resolution
- Evaluate new vendor features in Preview/Beta to determine enterprise applicability and value
- Lead annual SOX and security compliance audits, and design automation for license management and reclamation and policy enforcement and reporting
- Maintain and evolve a Selenium?based automation suite required to bridge gaps where vendor APIs are insufficient
- Serve as a key contributor to open?source initiatives, configurations, and inner?source tooling
- Consult with internal teams on advanced topics such as authentication patterns using GitHub Apps
- Author and drive execution of a strategic GitHub ecosystem optimization proposal, covering organizational and account footprint, repository rationalization, and governance models for private vs. internal repositories
- Design and implement Backstage plugins powering Nike’s developer portal, including AI Tools portal, GitHub insights and workflows, and an upcoming administrative control panel
- Contribute as a hands?on engineer and technical reviewer to other NDX platform capabilities such as Managed CI/CD, Jeter, and QMA
- Build dashboards and tooling to improve visibility into Cursor usage, cost trends, and optimization opportunities
- Balance platform?level architecture with direct code contributions in TypeScript, backend services, automation frameworks, and infrastructure tooling
- Act as a core member of the AI Dev Tools Feature Review Committee, helping evaluate, approve, and operationalize AI tools for enterprise use
- Lead and shape the MCP Server approval lifecycle, from proposal through review and production readiness
- Ensure all AI tooling aligns with the client's security, compliance, and responsible?AI standards
- Operate at the center of the client's development ecosystem, partnering closely with inner?source contributors across CX, NPE, and FPE teams, Security, Legal, CIS, and Platform Engineering, and internal engineering customers across domains
- Provide enterprise?level guidance on source control and GitHub best practices, CI/CD patterns and platform usage, and SDLC improvements and developer experience optimization
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