Lead Software Engineer

Why join OCLC? 

OCLC is consistently recognized as a best place to work by several independent programs. We recognize and reward people and results with a comprehensive Total Rewards package. This means competitive compensation that reflects your unique contributions—performance, experience, and skills—along with exceptional benefits, including best-in-class health coverage, retirement plans with generous company contributions, and a commitment to your overall well-being.

• We know the best ideas don’t always happen at a desk. Take a walking meeting around our 100-acre campus or enjoy lunch on the patio. We’re committed to your success—both personally and professionally. Hybrid work environment: For many roles, three days a week on-site, with occasional additional days based on business needs. 

• Free use of our on-site fitness center, gym sports, group exercise classes, and game room 

• Onsite catering and cafeteria subsidized by OCLC 

• Health and wellness events 

• Work environments with individual and team spaces and the latest technology tools 

• Paid parental leave and adoption assistance 

• Tuition reimbursement and Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility 

• Company-subsidized pricing on local tickets and memberships 

Join us in transforming how people everywhere access information and be part of a mission-driven team that makes a global impact. 

The job details are as follows:Access Checker is a green-field service within OCLC focused on harvesting and evaluating the accuracy of eResource links at large scale—helping libraries identify access issues earlier and improving the reliability of knowledge discovery for end users.
This role is for a Lead software engineer who enjoys owning meaningful parts of a system end-to-end, working across a larger ecosystem, and helping a team adopt an AI-first approach to design and development—both in how we build software and how we use ML/LLMs to improve performance and accuracy.
You’ll join a small, geographically dispersed team that’s encouraged to be independent, drive direction, and collaborate closely to deliver high-quality software that integrates across large sections of the OCLC codebase with a fully CI/CD approach.

Responsibilities:

• Own and deliver key components of the Access Checker system—from design through implementation, testing, and production support.
• Build and evolve a high-throughput link harvesting and evaluation pipeline that is efficient and reliable at scale.
• Design solutions that minimize impact on other systems (performance, isolation, resource usage) while integrating cleanly across OCLC.
• Lead technical discussions and contribute to architectural decisions, balancing speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers through pairing, feedback, and code/design reviews; help raise the bar for engineering practices.
• Help the team become AI-first: adopt AI-assisted development workflows and lead thoughtful use of ML/LLMs to achieve the required levels of evaluation quality, efficiency, and maintainability.
• Conduct code reviews and uphold code quality standards (testability, readability, observability, and operational readiness).

​Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related discipline, or equivalent work experience.
• 8+ years of software development experience delivering production systems.
• Strong programming skills in Java/Spring, with solid software engineering fundamentals (design, testing, debugging, performance).
• Experience designing and delivering services/systems that operate reliably under real-world constraints (scale, latency, cost, availability).
• Ability to lead, influence, and mentor; helping others deliver high-quality work.

Preferred / nice to have

• Experience applying ML/LLMs in production environments, at scale.
• Programming experience with React and Python for UIs and automated testing
• Experience with database systems and data-intensive workflows.
• Experience integrating AI tools, frameworks, and concepts into the software development process.
• Experience working in large codebases or platform ecosystems with multiple dependencies.

Working Conditions: Normal office environment.

ADA/EAA: The above statements cover what are generally believed to be the principal and essential functions of this job. Specific circumstances may allow or require some people assigned to the job to perform a somewhat different combination of duties.