Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer – Application Modernization & AI-Assisted Development Location: Nashville, TN (Hybrid Onsite) Employment Type: 12+ Month Contract Compensation: $65/hr (W2)

About the Opportunity Vaco is partnering with an established enterprise organization seeking a hands-on Senior Software Engineer to modernize business-critical applications and systems. This is a good fit for an engineer who enjoys digging into complex systems, figuring out how legacy applications work, and rebuilding them with modern architecture, scalable technologies, and AI-assisted development tools. We're not looking for someone who simply maintains existing applications or delegates the development work. We need someone who still enjoys getting into the code, solving difficult problems, and owning modernization efforts from concept through production. What You'll Do

• Analyze, reverse-engineer, and modernize legacy applications and backend systems
• Own modernization initiatives from technical assessment and architecture through hands-on development and deployment
• Design and build scalable backend services, APIs, data-processing workflows, and integrations
• Evaluate existing technology and determine the right modernization approach rather than defaulting to one programming language
• Use AI-assisted development tools to speed up coding, refactoring, testing, troubleshooting, and documentation
• Improve application performance, reliability, maintainability, and scalability
• Collaborate with engineering teams to align modernized applications with broader technology standards
• Take increasing technical ownership as applications and systems are modernized

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally building or modernizing enterprise applications
• Strong object-oriented programming fundamentals with experience in C#, Python
• Strong backend engineering experience involving APIs, integrations, data processing, and application architecture
• Experience working with legacy codebases and improving, refactoring, or rebuilding existing systems
• Practical experience with AI development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar tools
• Experience with Azure or AWS and scalable cloud application design
• Ability to independently assess technical problems, recommend an approach, and execute it
• Strong problem-solving skills and a willingness to challenge outdated approaches

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