Lead Software Engineer (Autonomy Services)

Job description

Career Area: Technology, Digital and Data Job Description: Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. Help Build the Future of Caterpillar At Caterpillar, technology always has a purpose, which is to solve our customers’ toughest challenges. Through Cat Technology, we are solving problems by building the intelligence layer that connects machines, data, and people to make jobsites safer, more productive, and more sustainable. By combining deep domain expertise in physical systems with software, connectivity, autonomy, and AI, we deliver solutions that work in the real world—on real jobsites, at global scale. You’ll build and deploy against one of the most unique data foundations - over 1.6 million connected assets generating real-world data daily. These data and platform capabilities are enabling the development of AI models, edge computing architectures, and software systems that scale across fleets, products, and industries. The result will be a new generation of machines that continuously learn, improve, and deliver performance at scale. What You Will Do: The Lead Software Engineer provides technical leadership for critical platform investments that enable a broad portfolio of digital applications. This role is an opportunity to shape architecture, influence engineering direction, and accelerate delivery of secure, scalable services on AWS while mentoring other engineers. You will drive high-impact technical decisions, establish strong development practices including secure AI-assisted and agentic engineering workflows, and help the team build platform capabilities that create meaningful business outcomes at scale. Lead design, development, testing, and deployment of backend RESTful API services using Java, Spring Boot, and microservices architecture. Act as a technical leader for development and support groups by providing architectural guidance, engineering direction, and hands-on problem solving. Own complex application and platform challenges from discovery through delivery, balancing speed, quality, security, and long-term maintainability. Set and reinforce high standards for software quality through design reviews, code reviews, testing strategy, operational readiness, and best practices. Mentor and develop engineers across the team, helping raise technical capability and consistency in execution. Lead adoption of AI-assisted and agentic software development practices across the team by defining effective repository guidance, approval workflows, validation standards, and secure development guardrails that improve delivery speed while preserving quality, architecture integrity, and human accountability. Influence full-stack architecture patterns across UI, API, and service layers while maintaining primary ownership of scalable backend microservice and platform architecture. Drive delivery of business-value features with cross-functional Agile teams while aligning implementation choices to product, platform, and enterprise needs. Guide the team in building structured application and interface code, technical documentation, and reusable patterns that improve scalability and developer productivity. WHAT YOU WILL HAVE Software Product Design/Architecture: Knowledge of software product design; ability to convert market requirements into software product design and strategic technical direction. Software Product Technical Knowledge: Knowledge of technical aspects of software products; ability to design, configure, and integrate technical aspects of software products. Software Integration Engineering: Knowledge of software integration processes and functions; ability to design, develop, and maintain interfaces and linkage to alternative platforms and software packages. Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment. Effective Communications: Understanding of effective communication concepts, tools, and techniques; ability to effectively transmit, receive, and accurately interpret ideas, information, and needs through appropriate communication behaviors. TOP CANDIDATES WILL HAVE Strong backend engineering capability with Java 17+ and Spring Boot to design and deliver RESTful APIs using microservices principles. Proven ability to build secure, scalable platform services in a cloud environment such as AWS or Azure. Experience deploying backend services in cloud-native environments. Knowledge of AI-assisted and agentic software development workflows Ability to review, validate, test, and refine AI-generated code and pull requests for correctness, maintainability, performance, security, and alignment with established engineering standards. Knowledge of responsible AI usage and secure coding practices in AI-assisted development Nice to Have: · Experience building production AI agents using Python · Experience with agent orchestration frameworks such as LangChain or LangGraph · Experience integration LLMs with external tools, APIs, databases, and retrieval systems · Experience designing evals, guardrails, and monitoring for agent reliability · Multi-agent workflow design and memory/context management · Prompt optimization, latency reduction, and cost control · MLOps or model deployment experience ADDITIONAL DETAILS This position requires the candidate to be based in Irving, TX (Dallas) Domestic relocation assistance is available for this position. Visa sponsorship is available for this position Summary Pay Range: $128,470.00 - $208,770.00 Compensation and benefits offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, job level, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, individual performance and experience. Please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Caterpillar. Benefits: Subject to plan eligibility, terms, and guidelines. This is a summary list of benefits. Medical, dental, and vision benefits* Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)* 401(k) savings plans* Health Savings Account (HSA)* Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)* Health Lifestyle Programs* Employee Assistance Program* Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts* Career Development* Incentive bonus* Disability benefits Life Insurance Parental leave Adoption benefits Tuition Reimbursement * These benefits also apply to part-time employees This position requires working onsite five days a week. Relocation is available for this position. Visa sponsorship is available for eligible applicants. Posting Dates: Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the successful completion of a drug screen. Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer, Including Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities. Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply. Not ready to apply? Join our Talent Community .