Senior Software Engineer

Conrad Labs is a software technology company with teams based in Lahore and Karachi, focused on building production software across client delivery, MVP and venture studio projects, as well as internal products. The company fosters an engineering culture that balances strong fundamentals with agentic development, encouraging engineers to use modern tools while remaining accountable for architecture, code quality, testing, security, maintainability, and production outcomes.

Key Responsibilities
As a Senior Software Engineer, you will own significant areas of a product or system, navigate ambiguity, lead technical execution, mentor other engineers, and deliver production-quality software. You will work on diverse projects including client delivery, MVP builds, venture studio initiatives, and internal products. Your tasks will include owning medium-to-large features or technical workstreams from planning through production, translating ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and milestones, and designing maintainable solutions using appropriate architecture patterns. You will write and review production-quality code across backend, frontend, database, and integration layers.

A critical part of your role will be leveraging agentic coding tools such as Claude Code or OpenAI Codex to accelerate understanding, implementation, testing, refactoring, and debugging. You will critically review AI-generated code for correctness, maintainability, security, performance, and alignment with existing patterns. Leading code reviews and design discussions, improving testing, observability, CI/CD, and release quality will also be key. Additionally, mentoring engineers through pairing, reviews, and feedback to raise the team’s proficiency with agentic workflows is essential. Clear communication of technical tradeoffs to both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders is expected.

Required Qualifications
- Minimum of 4 years of professional software engineering experience.
- Proven hands-on experience building production web applications.
- Strong fundamentals in backend development, API design, database management, and system design.
- Solid understanding of frontend development, especially modern web applications.
- Experience designing and delivering maintainable systems or modules.
- Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills.
- Familiarity with automated testing and quality assurance practices across the technology stack.
- Experience with cloud platforms and production deployment workflows.
- Proficiency in Git, pull requests, CI/CD pipelines, and release management.
- Ability to mentor engineers and improve team execution.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Agentic Development Skills
At the senior level, fluency with agentic development tools is mandatory. This includes demonstrated current use of Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or comparable tools on non-trivial production work. You should be adept at using these tools to explore unfamiliar codebases, identify relevant files and dependencies, and convert vague requirements into detailed specs, implementation plans, and test plans. Running an agentic implementation loop—planning, generating or editing, inspecting, testing, debugging, refactoring, documenting, and preparing pull requests—is essential.

You must critically evaluate AI-generated code for hidden bugs, weak abstractions, missing tests, security issues, and poor integration. Guiding junior engineers in responsible agentic development and knowing when to rely on human judgment over automated tools is crucial. Awareness of privacy, intellectual property, client confidentiality, and data leakage risks is also required.

Preferred Qualifications
Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, React, Next.js, Python, or similar technology stacks is advantageous. Familiarity with cloud and container platforms such as AWS, Vercel, Render, Docker, and Kubernetes is preferred. Experience in service delivery, product engineering, or MVP environments is a plus. Candidates with a background in creating technical design documents, RFCs, ADRs, or architecture notes will be valued.

Additional preferred skills include improving CI speed, test reliability, observability, or deployment quality, as well as creating repository-level instructions or workflows for agentic tools (e.g., CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, custom commands, hooks, or repeatable review prompts). Experience with AI-assisted code review or test generation workflows is also beneficial.

The hiring process involves a live pairing session where candidates work on a real problem alongside an engineer, utilizing agentic tooling. This stage assesses fluency and judgment in using these tools, focusing on reasoning about their outputs and knowing when to trust or question them. Conrad Labs hires based on merit and welcomes applicants from diverse backgrounds. Strong written and spoken English is required to effectively lead technical discussions with clients and teammates across time zones.