Contract Government Software Engineering Jobs in Chicago, IL

Location: Remote must reside in CO, FL, IA, IL, KS, MO, NE, OH, or TN

Travel: Twice yearly company offsite and customer conference

Salary: $120,000$160,000 annually depending on experience

Reports to: CTO

**Applicants will receive a Culture Index survey by email after applying. Completion of the survey is a required step in our hiring process. **

About the Company

We are an established software company with a long history of serving county and city governments. Today, we are transforming a broad portfolio of Windows-based applications into a modern SaaS suite of integrated products.

Our engineering organization supports both established products and the development of our next-generation SaaS platform. As products transition to the new platform, an increasing share of our engineering investment will focus on modernization.

Role Overview

As a Senior Software Engineer (Modern .NET), you will play a key role in building new web-based ERP products for county and city governments.

This is a senior, backend-focused individual contributor role with meaningful ownership and influence. You will design and deliver substantial product capabilitiesfrom domain and API design through data modeling, testing, deployment, and production support. Success in this role means taking ownership, making sound technical tradeoffs, and delivering reliable, maintainable software that the team can build on over time.

Our backend stack is C#/.NET and ASP.NET Core using vertical slice architecture, backed by EF Core + SQL Server and running in Azure. Our frontend is built with React and TypeScript. You will work closely with platform, frontend, product, design, and domain experts to turn complex government workflows into reliable, maintainable software. You will also help shape backend standards and product architecture as the new platform evolves.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deliver REST APIs, domain logic, and background workflows for finance, payroll, and future ERP product areas.
• Model durable data structures and manage EF Core migrations, SQL performance, and production data changes.
• Own complex capabilities from technical discovery and design through implementation, deployment, and production follow-up.
• Partner with product, design, and frontend engineering to break complex workflows into practical, testable increments.
• Help define integration and data-import approaches as customers transition from established desktop products to the new SaaS suite.
• Build appropriate unit and integration testing around business rules, API contracts, data integrity, and failure scenarios.
• Collaborate with the platform lead on CI/CD, observability, infrastructure, releases, and production diagnosis.
• Design secure, permission-aware, and auditable workflows appropriate for financial and government software.
• Contribute to technical leadership through code review, mentoring, documentation, and shared engineering standards.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including meaningful ownership of production backend systems.
• Strong production experience with C#/.NET and ASP.NET Core.
• Strong fundamentals in REST APIs, application architecture, and data modeling.
• Production experience with relational databases, including SQL Server, EF Core, schema migrations, and query optimization.
• Strong unit and integration testing practices, with the ability to align testing effort to technical and business risk.
• Experience deploying or operating cloud-hosted applications, preferably in Azure.
• Experience working with CI/CD pipelines and Git-based development workflows.
• Working familiarity with modern frontend architecture and browser/API integration; deep frontend specialization is not required.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with experience working across engineering, product, and design
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools responsibly while maintaining ownership of design, security, and code quality.

Preferred Qualifications

• Production experience with React, Angular, Vue, or another modern TypeScript framework.
• Familiarity with Figma or similar design collaboration tools.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Bicep.
• Greenfield or 0-to-1 product development experience.
• Experience modernizing desktop or client/server applications into SaaS products.
• Experience with finance, payroll, ERP, fintech, or local-government software.
• Experience working in regulated or audit-focused environments, including SOC 2, GovRAMP, or FedRAMP readiness.

Why Join CIC

• Help build the backend and data foundations of a new ERP platform backed by decades of customer and domain knowledge.
• Own meaningful product capabilities from design through production.
• Influence technical patterns and architecture while the platform is still taking shape.
• Work with experienced engineering, product, design, and domain professionals in a lean, collaborative team.
• Build software that local governments rely on to support important financial and operational workflows.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with the company paying 75% of monthly premiums.
• 401(k) with company contributions.
• Vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays to support work-life balance.