Technical Coach

Location: Fort Worth, TX (Onsite 3 days per week - Mandatory)

Length of contract: Three months to start, potential for long-term contract or contract-to-hire

Pay rate: Up to $85 hourly

Work authorization: Authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship

About the role

The ideal candidate is a senior software engineer who has evolved into a technical leader and coach. They possess deep expertise in software engineering, architecture, DevOps, and Agile delivery while enjoying the challenge of developing people as much as developing software. They are equally comfortable writing production code, facilitating technical workshops, mentoring engineers, and guiding enterprise engineering transformation initiatives. Their success is measured not by the features they build, but by the capability and effectiveness of the teams they help elevate.

This is not primarily a software engineering job. It's also not a Scrum Master or Agile Coach role. The client is looking for someone who has the credibility of a senior engineer and the influence of a coach.

Position Summary

We are seeking an experienced software engineering leader who is passionate about elevating engineering teams through coaching, technical excellence, and modern software development practices. This role combines the expertise of a senior software engineer, architect, and technical mentor to help product teams deliver reliable, scalable, and high-quality software. As a Technical Coach, you will work directly with engineering teams to improve software delivery, modernize engineering practices, strengthen DevOps capabilities, and foster a culture of continuous learning. Rather than owning a specific application, you will enable multiple teams to achieve higher levels of technical maturity through hands-on coaching, pair programming, architecture guidance, and engineering best practices.

Responsibilities

• Coach software engineering teams in adopting modern engineering practices, including Test-Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), refactoring, pair programming, and Extreme Programming (XP).
• Embed with cross-functional product teams to assess engineering challenges, identify delivery bottlenecks, and implement practical improvements.
• Partner with engineers, architects, and engineering leaders to improve software architecture, application resiliency, maintainability, and scalability.
• Lead Value Stream Mapping and engineering assessments to identify opportunities to improve flow, reduce technical debt, and accelerate delivery.
• Mentor software engineers through hands-on coding, technical design discussions, code reviews, and collaborative problem solving.
• Facilitate workshops, technical training sessions, and mob programming exercises that reinforce engineering excellence and knowledge sharing.
• Promote DevOps culture by improving automation, deployment pipelines, testing strategies, and developer experience.
• Define and monitor engineering metrics such as DORA and Flow Metrics to measure organizational improvement and delivery effectiveness.
• Influence engineering culture by modeling collaboration, continuous improvement, and customer-focused software delivery.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, to help teams leverage modern development capabilities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience developing enterprise-scale applications.
• Demonstrated expertise in Java and/or Python development.
• Strong experience designing and building distributed, cloud-native applications.
• Experience coaching, mentoring, or leading software engineering teams.
• Deep understanding of Agile, DevOps, and Extreme Programming (XP) principles.
• Hands-on experience with:
  • Test-Driven Development (TDD)
  • Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
  • Object-Oriented Design
  • Refactoring
  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
  • Automated Testing
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, microservices, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Ability to influence technical direction through collaboration rather than authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing enterprise CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience improving engineering organizations through coaching or transformation initiatives.
• Knowledge of Value Stream Mapping, Lean principles, and engineering performance metrics.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Kafka, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and REST/GraphQL APIs.
• Experience with AI and Machine Learning technologies, including:
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • AI Agents and Agentic Workflows
  • MLOps
• Familiarity with developer productivity platforms and internal engineering enablement initiatives.

Skills

• Languages: Java, Python, C#, JavaScript/TypeScript
• Frameworks: Spring Boot, FastAPI
• Cloud: Azure, AWS
• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps
• Testing: JUnit, PyTest, Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Postman
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis
• Messaging & APIs: Kafka, REST, GraphQL

What Success Looks Like

Successful candidates are recognized as trusted technical advisors who:

• Earn credibility through hands-on software engineering expertise.
• Help engineering teams improve code quality, delivery speed, and operational excellence.
• Coach engineers to adopt sustainable engineering practices rather than simply enforcing processes.
• Influence architecture decisions that reduce complexity and improve long-term maintainability.
• Drive measurable improvements in engineering performance through modern development practices and continuous learning.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and innovation while enabling teams to deliver greater customer value.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical benefits
• Competitive pay
• 401(k) Retirement plan