Lead Software Developer

About the Role

Baird is seeking a talented Lead .NET Software Developer to join our ThunderCATs team within our Corporate Resource Group (CRG) portfolio. The ThunderCATs team delivers critical IT solutions and support to key areas including Compliance, Corporate Real Estate and Facilities (CREW), and Legal. Our high-performing delivery team currently includes 4 experienced developers, 2 business analysts, a senior QA engineer, and a project manager, alongside a closely aligned Data & Analytics team. This is a hands-on leadership role where you’ll guide technical direction while contributing directly to development.

If you’re a passionate .NET leader ready to make an impact in a dynamic financial services firm, we’d love to hear from you.

The ThunderCATs team has experienced steady growth in scope and complexity. We support a diverse mix of custom-built applications and vendor solutions that serve multiple business units and other IT teams firm-wide. Recent projects have spanned Compliance, Private Wealth Management (PWM), PWM IT, Operations, Marketing, Finance, CREW, Data and Analytics, and other CRG delivery teams. Development is heavily Azure based.

Our development work is heavily cloud-based, centered on Microsoft Azure, modern.NET technologies, and best-in-class architectural practices. As we continue to expand, we’re looking for a technical leader who can help shape our future direction.

The Impact You’ll Make:

• Partner closely with business stakeholders to align on priorities, drive strategic initiatives, promote strong architectural patterns, and champion best practices that continuously improve our products and services
• Foster a shared ownership model, providing technical leadership across our products and platforms
• Identify and act on opportunities to improve technology health, introduce innovative approaches, simplify systems, consolidate where beneficial, and enhance cross-team collaboration as a true technical product advocate
• Effectively connect long-term technology roadmaps with immediate business needs, making pragmatic short-term decisions that support sustainable progress
• Lead design, development, and delivery of high-quality .NET applications and services
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the development team, conducting code review, promoting craftmanship, and fostering continuous improvement
• Collaborate closely with business analysts, QA, project managers, and stakeholders to define requirements, scope features, develop technical product roadmaps, and ensure successful delivery
• Own key architectural decisions, advocate for modernization efforts, and help evolve our Azure-based ecosystem
• Stay current with .NET ecosystem advancements and cloud trends to recommend and implement forward looking solutions

What You’ll Bring to Baird:

• 7+ years of professional software development with strong expertise in .NET/C#
• Hands-on experience building and deploying cloud-native applications on Microsoft Azure (App Services, Functions, Service Bus, SQL Database, Storage, etc)
• Proven track record in technical leadership, mentoring developers, and driving architectural improvements
• Solid understanding of modern development practices (CI/CD, Agile/Scrum, unit testing, clean code principles)
• Excellent communication skills and ability to bridge technical and business perspective
• Quality focused, motivated by quick wins and process improvement while maintaining strategic product vision and ownership.

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