8th Light

Partner with clients to solve complex architecture challenges focusing on legacy modernization and data dependency mapping. | Over 10 years experience architecting large distributed systems with proficiency in Kubernetes, Kafka, Java, AWS, and domain-driven design. | Senior Principal Solutions Architect Who We Are At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. Who You Are You’ve spent over 10 years architecting large, distributed systems across complex, multi-stakeholder environments. You move comfortably between long-term planning and hands-on design, building trust with executives focused on business value and the engineers who own implementation. You'll be well-suited if you have: Deep experience in enterprise architecture at scale, across large, distributed systems Strong data fluency, dependency mapping, data mesh enablement, high-availability and low-latency design Hands-on experience with the stack: Kubernetes, Kafka, Cassandra, Java, TypeScript, AWS, protobuf, Databricks, GraphQL, and REST Comfort using AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery and enable non-technical teams A track record of working across teams on complex, multi-stakeholder technical decisions, including trade-off and risk analysis (e.g. SPADE, architecture decision records) Credibility and trust building across a group including executives who will be focused on business value and senior technical stakeholders who will be focused on implementation Strong domain-driven design instincts and comfort with the ambiguity of both greenfield and legacy work What You’ll Do As a go-to architect and strategist within 8th Light, you'll partner with one or two clients a year on their hardest architecture challenges, while deepening your and our collective expertise over the course of your career with us. This role sits at the intersection of long-term planning and hands-on technical leadership. You'll work across the enterprise to map data dependencies, drive legacy modernization, and define how domains like pricing fit into a broader enterprise data and AI ecosystem. One day that might mean aligning teams to deliver new low-latency data sets; the next, running architecture trade-off analysis with senior product, design, and business leadership. A significant part of the work involves mapping application dependencies and capabilities, building an enterprise-wide context graph, and contributing to an MCP server built on enterprise architecture tooling, all aimed at giving teams (and the AI-assisted tools they use) the context to make better design, trade-off, and risk decisions. Day-to-day output is hands-on architecture and design: planning artifacts, architecture diagrams, decision records, and roadmap contributions. This isn't a feature-delivery role, but you'll need enough data and technical depth to make well-informed calls, design real systems, and build credibility with technical stakeholders. How You’ll be Supported At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future. Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes: A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform. Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development Coworking support for our global team Flexible PTO 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees See our full list of Benefits. A Note on Compensation At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs. We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows: Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin) RANGE: $173,585- $216,882 USD Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro ) RANGE: $182,328-$227,910 USD Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro) RANGE: $194,091-$242,613 USD Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City) RANGE: $202,325-$252,906 USD Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market. 8th Light Hubs and Geographies As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team. This role is fully remote and requires working in a US time zone, with central or east coast preferred so you can take calls between Los Angeles and London. Most of our engagements require no travel. This role is an exception, with two or three short trips a year across North America and Europe, none over a week. We hope to see you apply! #LI-Remote A Note on Your Privacy At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are, what we're looking for, and how we handle your information throughout the process. Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice. By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.

Lead software development projects including architecture design, project management, and team mentoring. | 7+ years software development experience with leadership in complex projects and proficiency in multiple languages including AI/ML integration. | Who We Are At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. Who You Are You’ve shown long-term repeated success on a variety of projects, typically over the course of 7+ years. You can be the go-to leader for any software development engagement. You have a broad and deep range of expertise that allows you to make an immediate impact on projects. In your previous experience, you have: Successfully led high-stakes consulting engagements from discovery to production Built high-quality, maintainable software collaboratively, incrementally, and through an approach tailored towards the unique needs of the clients you’ve served Written production-quality code using a variety of languages and frameworks, including but not limited to: Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Ruby, Scala, R, SQL, and Go Leveraged AI-assistive development tools for tasks like scaffolding, refactoring, debugging, test generation, and documentation Experience building or integrating AI/ML-powered features into products or systems (e.g., recommendation engines, NLP models, computer vision, predictive analytics) Used context-appropriate automated testing to inform software design choices and catch bugs Debugged and refactored pre-existing code to incrementally improve it Collaborated with teams using Git, MacOS/Linux, and CI/CD Remedied architecture-level concerns such as scalability, security, reliability, and performance Brought together people from different functions and perspectives in forums that encourage idea sharing, collaboration, and problem solving Made thoughtful recommendations and set direction in the face of ambiguity Mentored and shared knowledge with colleagues Actively sought out and effectively given feedback Communicated empathically with stakeholders and colleagues Collaboratively led stakeholders to balance technical considerations with product and user needs What You’ll Do At 8th Light As a lead technologist on projects, you’ll work with a variety of clients, typically one to two in a year, through a variety of technologies and frameworks over the course of your career with us. You’ll lead more complicated projects, leading teams to do so. You’ll work with colleagues who share your passion for technology solutions. You’ll invest time developing your skills and sharing what you know. You’ll be responsible for: Making immediate contributions to projects, rapidly building trust with clients Working pragmatically to balance technology choices while delivering high-quality work within deadlines Leading architecture and software design discussions Collaborating on systems that involve the full ML lifecycle from data ingestion and preprocessing, to model deployment, integration, and performance monitoring Generating new potential solutions to challenges (technical and non-technical) in partnership with team members and clients Leading or initiating formal feedback conversations with teams and clients via retrospectives Clearly articulating and documenting outcomes and driving forward action items Contributing to the health of your team and 8th Light’s culture by modeling our Values Ensuring your team has a healthy, prioritized, estimated backlog Managing high-level project roadmaps as the team lead for large engagements Maintaining relationships with client technical leaders Regular syncs with the client to provide status updates, and for identifying and evaluating risks and presenting potential solutions Identifying, mitigating, and resolving blockers to team progress Contributing to 8th Light by serving as a mentor, leading or designing workshops internally or for clients, representing 8th Light in the tech community, or supporting our hiring processes Strongly Preferred Skills We work across many areas, and encourage anyone with the experience listed above to apply. We would particularly like to encourage applicants with experience in the following areas: MLOps: including tools like LangChain for application development and managing the ML lifecycle Data Engineering: including platforms like Databricks for data processing and analytics DevSecOps & DevOps Infrastructure as Code Data Engineering: including platforms like Databricks for data processing and analytics Building a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace is an ongoing journey, and we’re excited to keep learning and growing together. We have a proud tradition of hiring talented colleagues with real-world career experiences. How You’ll be Supported At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future. Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes: A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform. Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development Coworking support for our global team Flexible PTO 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees See our full list of Benefits. A Note on Compensation At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs. We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Lead Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows: Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin) RANGE: $126,279-$157,849 USD Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro ) RANGE: $132,700-$165,875 USD Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro) RANGE: $141,261-$176,576 USD Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City) RANGE: $147,254-$184,068 USD Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market. 8th Light Hubs and Geographies As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team. In most cases, our consulting engagements do not require travel. We hope to see you apply! #LI-Remote A Note on Your Privacy At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are, what we're looking for, and how we handle your information throughout the process. Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice. By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.

Lead platform strategy and delivery, advise on architecture and scalability, mentor teams, and influence executives. | 10+ years building production-grade platforms with AI/agentic systems expertise and consulting leadership. | Who We Are At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. Who You Are You’ve shown long-term repeated success on a variety of projects, typically over the course of 10+ years. You are a trusted expert and leader, often called upon to guide ambiguous initiatives and architect scalable solutions. You bring a blend of deep consulting acumen, technical expertise, and product thinking that drives measurable and impactful outcomes. In your previous experience, you have: Built and shipped production-grade platforms: the reusable foundations, tools, infrastructure, and workflows that help other teams shift faster and more reliably Taken AI and agentic systems from prototype to production, with a strong understanding of infrastructure, authentication, and observability Delivered on high-stakes consulting engagements across multiple language paradigms, stacks, ecosystems, and client industries Built high-quality, maintainable software collaboratively, incrementally, and through an approach tailored towards the unique needs of the clients you’ve served Led the development and delivery of production-grade software using a variety of languages and frameworks, including but not limited to: Java, C#/.NET, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Go, Ruby, Scala, R, and SQL Actively experimented with AI development tools and translated that experimentation into faster, higher-quality delivery for your teams A track record of understanding, assessing, and embracing new tooling and trends within the software industry Built or integrated AI/ML features into products and systems, including recommendation engines, NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, RAG pipelines, and agents Successfully led modernization and replatforming efforts to align legacy systems with short and long-term business needs Led and delivered solutions to architecture-level problems including scalability, security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and observability Facilitated alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders to move initiatives forward through ambiguity and complexity Provided mentorship and team support at scale, while sharing knowledge and improving team practices Collaboratively led stakeholders to balance technical considerations with product and user needs Actively sought out and effectively given feedback What You’ll Do At 8th Light As a go-to technologist and strategist within 8th Light, you’ll work with a variety of clients, typically one to two in a year, while continuing to deepen your and our collective domain expertise over the course of your career with us. You’ll be responsible for: Rapidly building trust with clients, demonstrating technical expertise and understanding of their domain and objectives Driving platform engineering work at the client level, connecting long-term technical vision to what ships Leading platform strategy and delivery across diverse platform types, connecting long-term vision to what ships Working pragmatically to balance technology choices while delivering high-quality work within deadlines Advising clients on architecture, scalability and platform evolution, connecting technical decisions to product and business outcomes Collaborating on systems that involve the full ML lifecycle from data ingestion and preprocessing, to model deployment, integration, and performance monitoring Driving innovation by proactively surfacing new technical approaches and product solutions Leading or initiating formal feedback conversations with teams and clients via retrospectives Clearly articulating and documenting outcomes and driving forward action items Contributing to the health of your team and 8th Light’s culture by modeling our Values Designing and managing high-level technical roadmaps for large engagements Building your network and maintaining relationships with clients and other industry leaders within your domain Coaching client engineering teams, transferring knowledge and leveling up practices Influencing client CTOs and executive decisions. Planning and execute technical work that involves stakeholders outside of project boundaries such as across a client's technical organization Partner with account teams on planning, opportunity identification, stakeholder relationships, and pre-sales scope shaping Facilitating retrospectives, strategy sessions, and technical deep-dives to improve team and project outcomes Identifying, mitigating, and resolving blockers to team progress Contributing to 8th Light by serving as a mentor, leading or designing workshops internally or for clients, representing 8th Light in the tech community, or supporting our hiring processes Demonstrating leadership in scalable system design, modular architecture, and platform- or product-oriented development Bringing depth in testing strategies, observability, fault tolerance, and secure engineering practices Applying architectural patterns to evaluate tradeoffs and drive clear, documented design rationale Strongly Preferred Skills We work across many areas, and encourage anyone with the experience listed above to apply. We would particularly like to encourage applicants with experience in the following areas: Platform engineering: building reusable software foundations, internal developer platforms, and infrastructure that other teams build on Data Engineering: including platforms like Databricks for data processing and analytics Delivering production agentic systems, including RAG pipelines, vector search, and agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, AutoGen, and n8n DevSecOps & DevOps MLOps Infrastructure as Code Building a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace is an ongoing journey, and we’re excited to keep learning and growing together. We have a proud tradition of hiring talented colleagues with real-world career experiences. How You’ll be Supported At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future. Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes: A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform. Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development Coworking support for our global team Flexible PTO 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees See our full list of Benefits. A Note on Compensation At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs. We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows: Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin) RANGE: $151,535-$189,418 USD Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro ) RANGE: $159,240-$199,050 USD Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro) RANGE: $169,513-$211,892 USD Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City) RANGE: $176,705- $220,881 USD Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market. 8th Light Hubs and Geographies As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team. In most cases, our consulting engagements do not require travel. We hope to see you apply! #LI-Remote A Note on Your Privacy At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are, what we're looking for, and how we handle your information throughout the process. Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice. By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.

Partner with clients to solve complex architecture challenges, focusing on legacy modernization and data dependency mapping. | Over 10 years experience architecting large distributed systems with proficiency in Kubernetes, Kafka, AWS, and strong domain-driven design skills. | Senior Principal Solutions Architect Who We Are At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. Who You Are You’ve spent over 10 years architecting large, distributed systems across complex, multi-stakeholder environments. You move comfortably between long-term planning and hands-on design, building trust with executives focused on business value and the engineers who own implementation. You'll be well-suited if you have: Deep experience in enterprise architecture at scale, across large, distributed systems Strong data fluency, dependency mapping, data mesh enablement, high-availability and low-latency design Hands-on experience with the stack: Kubernetes, Kafka, Cassandra, Java, TypeScript, AWS, protobuf, Databricks, GraphQL, and REST Comfort using AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery and enable non-technical teams A track record of working across teams on complex, multi-stakeholder technical decisions, including trade-off and risk analysis (e.g. SPADE, architecture decision records) Credibility and trust building across a group including executives who will be focused on business value and senior technical stakeholders who will be focused on implementation Strong domain-driven design instincts and comfort with the ambiguity of both greenfield and legacy work What You’ll Do As a go-to architect and strategist within 8th Light, you'll partner with one or two clients a year on their hardest architecture challenges, while deepening your and our collective expertise over the course of your career with us. This role sits at the intersection of long-term planning and hands-on technical leadership. You'll work across the enterprise to map data dependencies, drive legacy modernization, and define how domains like pricing fit into a broader enterprise data and AI ecosystem. One day that might mean aligning teams to deliver new low-latency data sets; the next, running architecture trade-off analysis with senior product, design, and business leadership. A significant part of the work involves mapping application dependencies and capabilities, building an enterprise-wide context graph, and contributing to an MCP server built on enterprise architecture tooling, all aimed at giving teams (and the AI-assisted tools they use) the context to make better design, trade-off, and risk decisions. Day-to-day output is hands-on architecture and design: planning artifacts, architecture diagrams, decision records, and roadmap contributions. This isn't a feature-delivery role, but you'll need enough data and technical depth to make well-informed calls, design real systems, and build credibility with technical stakeholders. How You’ll be Supported At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future. Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes: A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform. Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development Coworking support for our global team Flexible PTO 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees See our full list of Benefits. A Note on Compensation At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs. We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows: Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin) RANGE: $173,585- $216,882 USD Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro ) RANGE: $182,328-$227,910 USD Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro) RANGE: $194,091-$242,613 USD Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City) RANGE: $202,325-$252,906 USD Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market. 8th Light Hubs and Geographies As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team. This role is fully remote and requires working in a US time zone, with central or east coast preferred so you can take calls between Los Angeles and London. Most of our engagements require no travel. This role is an exception, with two or three short trips a year across North America and Europe, none over a week. We hope to see you apply! #LI-Remote A Note on Your Privacy At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are, what we're looking for, and how we handle your information throughout the process. Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice. By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.

Build high-quality software leveraging AI/ML capabilities and mentor team members across client projects. | 4+ years experience, strong collaboration, and knowledge of modern software practices. | 8th Light, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to contribute to varied client projects across technologies. This role involves building high-quality software, leveraging AI and ML capabilities, and aiding team growth through mentorship. Ideal candidates have 4+ years of experience, excellent collaboration skills, and knowledge of modern software practices. The position offers a flexible remote work environment and competitive pay in Chicago of $104,160–$130,200 USD. #J-18808-Ljbffr