Expert Software Engineer at Ensono
Richmond, VA
$130,000–$188,000from the description
Jul 7, 2026
Richmond, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor and technical leadership role centered on building and maintaining high-performance C++ applications, with responsibilities spanning memory management, multithreaded architecture, CMake build systems, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization. The role also involves debugging with tools like GDB and Valgrind, mentoring less-experienced engineers, and contributing to system design. Notably, the required skills section lists mainframe technologies (COBOL, CICS, JCL, DB2) alongside the C++ focus, suggesting a mixed or legacy-modernization environment.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 6 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 210 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 65–320
Applicant volume Light — Few people clear these requirements, so an application that does clear them gets looked at. Worth applying to even if you miss a nice-to-have.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
This posting contains a striking internal contradiction: the Roles & Responsibilities section describes a modern C++ systems engineering role (C++11/14/17/20, CMake, Docker, CI/CD, GDB, Valgrind), while the Required Skills & Experience section opens with '10+ years of experience in Mainframe Skills — COBOL, CICS, JCL, DB2 and VSM.' These two skill sets are unrelated and likely reflect a copy-paste error in the job description. Both sets are placed under required/hard-gate headings, so both are marked as required here, but hiring managers should verify which skill set is actually intended for this role.
The title 'Expert Software Engineer' carries no standard seniority level word (Junior/Mid/Senior/Staff/Principal), so advertised seniority is treated as Unspecified. The 10+ year experience requirement and scope of responsibilities (mentoring, architecture, system design) support a Senior classification.
Jenkins is listed as one example in a parenthetical ('e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions') within the CI/CD pipeline requirement. It is treated as a preferred/illustrative tool rather than a hard gate on any specific platform; the CI/CD pipeline requirement itself is the hard gate.
The degree requirement states 'Bachelor's or master's degree… Equivalent industry experience will be considered in lieu of formal education,' so no formal degree is hard-required.
The role is listed as Remote - United States with no specific metro area identified.
This posting reads as a fully-remote role, so it was scored against the national candidate pool rather than a single metro.
Read the full posting
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