Lead Java Software Engineer - Backend (VP)

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities.

This is a Lead Software Engineering position at Vice President level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs.

Since 1935, Morgan Stanley is known as a global leader in financial services, always evolving and innovating to better serve our clients and our communities in more than 40 countries around the world.

Global Security Settlements Team Profile

Our platform provides one of the most critical functions enabling the firm to effect security settlements in all the markets the firm conducts the business in. On peak volume days, the Firm processes up to forty million trades and effects settlements worth hundreds of billions of dollars for activity ongoing in multiple countries and currencies across the globe.

Our team has significant presence in Montreal, New York, and India. We are organized into agile squads closely aligned with product owners, users, and other stakeholders, which allows us to directly observe the business benefit of the solutions we develop, deploy and support.

Role

We in Securities Settlements Tech are looking for a VP (Lead Software Engineer) in New York, preferably with exposure to Cloud Architectures & Public Cloud offerings, to join our team building a large, resilient, scalable, and secure distributed settlement platform. You will be a leader building software and managing huge volume of data to support and improve efficiency of firm’s settlement related activities. Working in an agile environment, you will have to interact directly with the users, product owners, business analysts, and other technologists across the firm.

If you have a track record of leading a team and delivering large‑scale distributed applications, preferably on Azure/Cloud, we’d like to meet you.

Responsibilities Description

• Collaborate with product owners, business analysts and other teams to clarify the requirements, define milestones and backlog based on business priorities, team capability and velocity.
• Drive the definition of system architecture and design.
• Write clean, performant, scalable, testable, and reusable code.
• Review pull requests, and guide more junior developers helping them to adopt the best design, coding, and testing practices.
• Guide the team to follow the best DevOps practices and enhance observability, availability, and resiliency.
• Act as an end‑to‑end owner ensuring the system is developed, tested, deployed as planned and is performing as expected in production environments.
• Contribute to enhancing team standards and improving processes.

Skills Required (essential)

• Hands‑on, with 10+ years’ experience in building distributed systems applying agile practices.
• Experience in owning a delivery end‑to‑end and leading a development team comprised of Backend and/or Data Engineers.
• Strong working knowledge of core Java and Spring frameworks including spring‑boot and testing.
• Strong working knowledge of AI spec driven development and leveraging AI tools to accelerate SDLC and software development.
• Proven expertise in designing, developing, and maintaining robust RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs. Demonstrated understanding of API versioning strategies, backward compatibility, documentation practices.
• Strong understanding of managing and scaling high volume databases. Experience in MS SQL, Snowflake, Mongo DB preferred.
• Sound understanding of microservice architecture and design patterns, system resiliency, scalability, security, and observability.
• Experience in designing and implementing messaging‑ and rest‑based middleware and performing database modelling.
• Knowledge of DevOps practices and tools.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

Skills Desired (recommended)

• Understanding of Cloud‑based application development, preferably with Microsoft Azure Cloud.
• Familiarity with Kafka and Mongo DB.
• Experience Angular UI development framework.
• Experience coordinating and mentoring a development team.
• Prior experience in FinTech application development.
• Experience with working in a global delivery team.

Expected base pay rates for the role will be between $150,000 and $210,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short and long‑term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.

It is the policy of the Firm to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, age, sex, sex stereotype, gender, gender identity or expression, transgender, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, disability, marital and civil partnership/union status, pregnancy, veteran or military service status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversifying its workforce (M/F/Disability/Vet).