Associate Director Staff Engineer Software

OneMain Financial • Baltimore, MD

4d

About The Position

This role focuses on defining and evolving scalable, resilient architectures for communication platforms that support customer engagement across voice, messaging, and digital channels. The position requires a blend of strategic architecture design and hands-on engineering, with approximately 50% of the time dedicated to implementation. The Associate Director will architect API-first ecosystems, design event-driven and streaming architectures, and integrate with enterprise platforms like CRM, CPaaS, and marketing automation systems. A key aspect of the role involves cross-functional leadership, influencing decisions across teams, and establishing architecture standards, governance, and continuous improvement initiatives. The ideal candidate will be a self-starter, a thought provocateur, collaborative, pragmatic, and an influential communicator.

Requirements

• Strong expertise in backend architecture and distributed systems design
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerization (Docker, orchestration patterns)
• Hands-on experience with GraphQL and modern API architectures (REST, event-driven systems)
• Hands-on experience with Microservices and cloud-native platforms
• Hands-on experience with Observability: Distributed tracing (X-Ray/OpenTelemetry), structured logging, metrics/alerting pipelines
• Hands-on experience with Messaging & Orchestration: SQS/EventBridge or equivalents (Pub/Sub, Service Bus); DLQs; workflow engines
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD: Automated pipelines with tools including Github Actions, Jenkins or equivalent
• Experience building or supporting real-time or high-throughput systems
• Proficiency in backend technologies (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Node.js, Go, or similar)
• Ability to operate across strategic architecture and hands-on implementation
• Strong grounding in scalability, resiliency, and performance engineering
• Strong grounding in API lifecycle and governance
• Strong grounding in system integration and orchestration patterns
• Experience aligning solutions to enterprise target-state architecture
• Self-starter: Proactively drives outcomes with minimal oversight
• Thought provocateur: Challenges existing paradigms and elevates architectural thinking
• Collaborative: Builds alignment across engineering, product, and architecture teams
• Pragmatic: Balances long-term vision with near-term delivery needs
• Influential communicator: Clearly conveys complex technical concepts to varied stakeholders

Nice To Haves

• Experience in Financial Services (Secure, compliant systems (PII, PCI, regulatory constraints), Transactional platforms (payments, lending, servicing))
• Experience in Communications / MarTech / Contact Center (Low-latency, high-availability distributed systems, Personalization engines, campaign orchestration, Voice, messaging, IVR, or omnichannel engagement platforms)
• Domain Experience in one or more of the following: Financial Services, Communications / MarTech / Contact Center

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve scalable, resilient architectures for communication platforms supporting customer engagement (voice, messaging, digital channels)
• Design solutions aligned to industry-specific requirements: Financial Services (security, compliance, auditability), Communications (real-time processing, high availability), MarTech (personalization, event-driven engagement)
• Ensure alignment with enterprise target-state architecture and platform strategy
• Design and implement backend services, APIs, and integration layers
• Build and deploy applications using containerized environments and Kubernetes orchestration
• Develop production-grade code, prototypes, and reference implementations
• Architect API-first ecosystems, including GraphQL and RESTful services
• Design event-driven and streaming architectures to support real-time communication and marketing workflows
• Integrate with enterprise platforms such as CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce), Contact center / CPaaS platforms, and Marketing automation and customer data platforms
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure solution alignment and execution
• Act as a thought partner, introducing innovative approaches and improving system design quality
• Influence decisions across teams without formal authority
• Establish and enforce architecture standards, reusable patterns, and engineering guardrails
• Drive simplification, scalability, and reduction of technical debt
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend pragmatic adoption aligned to business value

Benefits

• Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship status, color, creed, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information or history, marital status, military status, national origin, nationality, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, transgender or on any other basis protected by law.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed