Managing Director, Tech Lead & Senior Staff Engineer, Brooklyn Investment Group

TIAA•New York, NY

1d•$250,000 - $300,000•Onsite

About The Position

This role is for a Managing Director, Tech Lead & Senior Staff Engineer within the Brooklyn Investment Group. The position involves owning the technical architecture and evolution of backend services, driving API design, leading integration strategy, and architecting AWS infrastructure. The role also includes establishing engineering standards, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with product and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions. The company is Nuveen, a global investment leader.

Requirements

8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2 years operating at a Staff or Tech Lead level
Demonstrated experience building and scaling client-facing financial software or SaaS platforms serving professional/enterprise users
Deep proficiency in Python, including async patterns, performance optimization, and large codebase stewardship
Proven track record designing and operating production REST APIs at scale (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)
Production experience with message and event driven systems (RabbitMQ, etc)
Strong expertise with relational databases (PostgreSQL) and document stores (MongoDB), including schema design, query optimization, and migration strategy
Extensive experience with AWS (ECS, Fargate, Lambda, S3, SQS/SNS) and Infrastructure-as-Code (AWS CDK, Terraform, or CloudFormation) in production environments
Track record of improving engineering culture — testing practices, observability, incident management, or developer experience
Strong technical communication skills: ability to write clear proposals, lead design reviews, and articulate tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical audiences

Nice To Haves

Direct experience in asset management, wealth management, or trading systems — particularly portfolio construction, rebalancing, or order management
Familiarity with market data providers (Polygon, Bloomberg, Reuters) and financial data workflows
Experience with modern frontend frameworks (Vue.js, React) and a willingness to contribute across the stack when needed
Background with Python data libraries (Pandas, NumPy) for financial data transformation and analysis
Experience with Datadog or similar APM/observability platforms at an operational level (defining SLOs, building dashboards, tuning alerts)
Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, and designing systems for eventual consistency
Familiarity with regulatory or compliance considerations in financial software (SOC 2, data residency, audit trails)

Responsibilities

Own the technical architecture and evolution of our FastAPI and RabbitMQ based backend services, making design decisions that balance speed of delivery with long-term maintainability across portfolio rebalancing, trade management, and advisor workflow systems
Drive the design of APIs and data contracts consumed by both our internal Vue/Nuxt advisor portal and external integrations, ensuring they are reliable, well-documented, and built for scale
Lead the integration strategy across our data layer — PostgreSQL databases, MongoDB/DocumentDB, real-time market data feeds, and custodial data services — identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and reliability gaps
Architect and improve our AWS infrastructure (CDK, ECS Fargate, serverless components) with a focus on operational excellence, cost efficiency, and deployment confidence
Establish and enforce engineering standards for testing, observability, incident response, and code quality, setting patterns that other engineers adopt
Serve as the primary technical decision-maker on the team, evaluating build-vs-buy tradeoffs, technology choices, and system design proposals
Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and architectural guidance — without taking on direct reports
Collaborate directly with product, operations, and portfolio management stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into sound technical solutions