Technical Lead – Software Engineering (Python)

A Little About Us

UniCourt is a leader in making court data more accessible and useful with our Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS). We provide real-time access to court data through our APIs and online app for business development and intelligence, litigation analytics, litigation tracking, case research, investigations, background checks, due diligence, compliance, underwriting, machine learning models, and process automation.

We provide access to court data from state and federal courts to a diverse list of clients, including Fortune 500 companies and AmLaw firms and industries such as legal, insurance, finance, investigations, government, education, nonprofits, and consumers.

UniCourt is a legal technology company focused on using technology to unlock the potential of legal data. We are based in both California and Mangalore, India and our team includes legal professionals, data scientists, physicists, computer engineers, and sales and marketing, professionals

About the Job

We are looking for a highly skilled Technical Lead – Software Engineering with a minimum of 8 years of software development experience, to drive the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) while ensuring best practices, performance optimization, and technical excellence. The ideal candidate will take complete ownership of the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of our systems while mentoring team members and enforcing software engineering standards.

Our company creates some of the world’s most cutting-edge software solutions in the legal industry. We solve difficult problems, work on innovative technology, and build world-class platforms for people and enterprises to interact with court records and other public data sets. With some of the best minds in the industry, we’re one of the most sought-after learning and career destinations in the world of legal tech. If you’re looking to work at a company with opportunities to forge your career path in technology, UniCourt is the right place for you.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Enforce the SDLC process, ensuring adherence to functional design documentation (FDD), implementation design documentation (IDD), time estimation, development, code review, testing, and deployment with comprehensive documentation.
• Own the IDD creation process, ensuring complete documentation, including wireframes, mindmaps, database designs, pseudocode, and logic structures.
• Collaborate with Engineering Manager, CTO, and other stakeholders to finalize and validate technical documentation.
• Mentor and lead a team of 6+ developers
• Design and maintain architecture solutions, including microservices, AWS communication architecture, and Docker deployment.
• Implement and enforce coding standards, development best practices, and performance optimization strategies.
• Conduct meticulous code reviews; attention to detail with a keen eye for identifying issues, conducting multiple iterative reviews, strictly enforcing coding standards, and emphasizing the importance of code quality, documentation, and thorough commenting practices.
• Ensure code compliance with IDD, logic, and architectural standards.
• Manage technical debt and proactively address software optimizations to improve efficiency and scalability.
• Oversee time estimation, task allocation, and project deadlines to ensure timely delivery of development objectives.
• Define and execute deployment plans, migration strategies, and architectural transitions with minimal downtime.
• Lead DevSecOps practices, ensuring vulnerability management, license compliance, and CI/CD implementation with security, performance, and reliability tests.
• Evaluate and integrate new technologies, frameworks, and methodologies, ensuring efficient adoption and minimal technical debt.
• Execute time bound time-bound Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) with open source frameworks and tech stacks
• Monitor production deployments, set up performance dashboards, and execute capacity planning for scalability and resource efficiency.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.

Required Skills

• 8+ years of experience in Python software development and technical leadership roles.
• Mentored and lead at least 4 developers
• Strong expertise in SDLC processes, Agile methodologies, and documentation standards.
• Hands-on experience in system design, microservices architecture, and AWS-based solutions.
• Expertise in Python frameworks such as Django or Flask.
• Extensive experience in Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and DevSecOps best practices.
• Strong knowledge of AI Large Language Models (LLMs); familiarity with using API-driven models such as OpenAI and Claude, as well as Open Source models like DeepSeek, Llama, etc. Skilled in prompt engineering to effectively integrate LLM solutions into practical development workflows.
• Obsessed with performance optimization, having a proven background in performance and memory profiling; adept at identifying root causes of performance bottlenecks and implementing effective solutions to significantly improve execution time and resource utilization.
• Highly efficient in building and executing time-bound Proof-of-Concepts (POCs); hands-on experience with multiple technology stacks and Open Source Software (OSS) frameworks to facilitate rapid prototyping and validation of technical solutions.
• Obsessed with improving developer productivity using AI-assisted IDEs; hands-on experience with AI code assistants like GitHub Copilot, Cursor.io, and Windsurf. Demonstrated ability to lead by example and mentor team members in leveraging AI tools to enhance coding efficiency and effectiveness.
• Strong knowledge of security vulnerabilities, dependency management, and compliance.
• Hands-on experience with code reviews, developer testing, and quality assurance workflows.
• Excellent problem-solving and capacity planning skills.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder collaboration abilities.