Demo

Technical Fellow

AHEAD
Chicago, IL Full Time
POSTED ON 1/20/2026 CLOSED ON 2/19/2026

What are the responsibilities and job description for the Technical Fellow position at AHEAD?

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.

We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.

As a Technical Fellow you are the most senior technologists in our consulting organization. You have a passion for technology and helping customers to get more value from their engineering activities. You love to push new boundaries and aren't afraid to drive new ideas or lead into areas with ambiguity. You are able to break down complex programs into simple digestible steps and are able to communicate them to executive leadership. "Credibility" is a cornerstone to how you operate, you gain this credibility by being able to articulate high level visions and dive down to the deepest level of detail. In addition, you are very approachable to your team members and willing to assist them with any tasks that they are working on. You might have a primary area of expertise (e.g. AI, Platform Engineering) but you are comfortable operating at anywhere up and down the stack and always willing to learn new tools and technologies without hesitation.
For our customers, you will act as the "CTO" for that account. You are establishing and holding key relationships within our customers organization. You are able to easily align your goals to the same outcomes that they want to achieve. You are not just a smart technologist, you are keenly aware of the business vertical and the business objectives that they need to achieve. You are able to live in the trenches but always "think differently" for them and bring new ideas or ways of working. You are seen as an innovator by that customer and not afraid to push new boundaries with technology to help them to get more value from their engineering activities.
For your active projects, you will act as the technical expert of delivery quality and execution. You love going into the code, will help to upskill your team members, and guide them to establishing a culture of engineering excellence. You have seen what quality software looks like and you won't cut corners to ensuring that you achieve it.
For our organization, you will act as an innovator for our company. Your accounts will be fertile ground for new ideas and innovation. You will be able to take these new ideas and genericize them to become methodologies and able to be used in other contexts. You help the organization choose the right technologies and approaches to emerging trends. You are able to apply them to our business and enable our teams of differing skill levels to take part in the solution. You are seen as the expert and the standard bearer of engineering excellence.
As a person, you are easily approachable and love to make team members around you better. Even though you are a lead technologist, you are humble and help others to feel empowered. You see that your success depends on the success of the team members around you. You love to mentor and help jr engineers to develop the same passion for technology that you possess.
Roles and Responsibilities
  • Lead large strategic programs from a technical perspective
  • Establish architectural patterns across the entire program
  • Set vision and communicate it to customer
  • Oversee overall quality and ensure technical alignment
  • Mentor Jr Engineers and assist them in their progression
  • Establish consistent thought leadership and innovation for your customers
  • Participate in code reviews
  • Choose the correct technologies and ensure they are used properly
  • Onboard team members and set expectations
  • Set high standards, lead by example, and meet technical consultants where they're at meet and exceed expectations
  • Lead workshops and ideation sessions with your customer
  • Build internal methodologies and advocate for newer ways of working
  • Work with sales specialists and service partners to build an account vision. Own the technical vision within an account
  • Continuously working to improve the developer experience for team members, in internal and client contexts
  • Operate in a truly DevSecOps mindset and any and all day 2 concerns will be prioritized in any and all feature development
Qualifications
  • Deep experience leading and participating in large scale software development programs
  • Have lead modernizations or transformations
  • Deep understanding of architectural patterns and how to apply them at scale (Event Driven, Microservices, SOA, Monolithic, Broker, etc.)
  • Familiarity with the major 3 cloud providers
  • Familiarity with technologies all the way up the stack (automation, platform engineering, custom development, front end engineering, etc.)
  • Experience delivering native applications at scale (e.g. Android, IOS, Flutter)
  • Experience building and delivering custom front end applications (e.g. Angular, React, etc)
  • Comfortability and experience using AI in your custom software, anywhere up the stack (dev experience, prompt engineering, etc.)
  • Deep experience leading products (not projects)
Why AHEAD:

Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.

We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.

USA Employment Benefits include:
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- 401(k)
- Paid company holidays
- Paid time off
- Paid parental and caregiver leave
- Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details.

The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings ("OTE") for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate's relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.

 

Salary.com Estimation for Technical Fellow in Chicago, IL
$110,570 to $141,178
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