Senior Software Engineer, Conversational Platform

Job Description

Senior Software Engineer, Conversational Platform

Boston, MA

• Remote (United States Only)
  
  

$75 - $80 / Hour

Job Overview

• Contract Duration: 6 months (with potential to extend)
• Start Date: May 13, 2026
• Authorization: Must be authorized to work W2 in the USA
• Eligibility: Must complete vendor verification and background check
  
  

About The Role

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join a dedicated delivery team at an agency client, a pioneer in voice and conversational AI. This role focuses on delivering a large-scale conversational platform initiative for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The platform is built on Microsoft Azure within a highly regulated, enterprise public-sector environment.

This is a hands-on engineering role centered on the design and development of the conversational backend. You will build core platform services, implement integrations with client-managed APIs and security systems, and translate solution architecture into working software. You will be responsible for technical execution while contributing to architectural discussions and providing technical guidance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead technical implementation planning from design through deployment readiness.
• Translate architecture into application, integration, and infrastructure requirements.
• Design and implement core backend services for orchestration, conversation state, session-context handling, and integration adapters.
• Write production-quality code for Azure-based services using approved patterns.
• Coordinate across API, security, identity, content, and operations teams.
• Establish scalable patterns for multi-threaded conversational workflows, session handling, and system interactions.
• Support backlog development, delivery sequencing, and technical issue resolution.
• Review technical designs, code, and integration artifacts for quality and alignment.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex integration and runtime issues.
• Define observability, operational readiness, and production support requirements.
  
  

Required Qualifications

• 8 years of experience in software engineering, including leading complex backend or platform delivery efforts.
• Strong hands-on experience building production backend services and APIs.
• Experience contributing directly to implementation alongside providing technical leadership.
• Experience debugging distributed, event-driven, or integration-heavy systems.
• Experience with Microsoft Azure application services and integration patterns.
• Experience with API integrations, workflow orchestration, and state management.
• Proficiency in Python for backend development (Node.js or TypeScript acceptable).
• 1 years of experience working with conversational AI, agent-based systems, or LLM-enabled applications.
• Experience working across engineering, architecture, security, and operations teams.
• Experience delivering in regulated or enterprise environments (public sector strongly preferred).
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate architecture into execution.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with grounded response patterns, search-integrated conversational systems, or retrieval-augmented (RAG) approaches.
• Experience with Azure services such as Container Apps, Durable Functions, Azure OpenAI, Cosmos DB, Service Bus, Redis, and AI Search.
• Experience with testing or evaluation approaches for LLM-enabled systems.
• Experience in government, healthcare, or similarly regulated environments.
• Familiarity with accessibility and trust considerations for public-facing systems.