Senior Backend Manager

Mesirow•Chicago, IL

About The Position

Mesirow Financial is an independent, employee-owned firm founded in 1937 that provides investment, risk management, and advisory services. The role builds, modernizes, and evolves the systems behind Investment Management applications, combining strong engineering fundamentals with cloud-native architecture, AI-assisted development, and DevOps practices to deliver software efficiently and reliably. The position designs and maintains backend components, leads modernization and architecture efforts, integrates third-party and investment-related systems, and improves software quality, security, performance, release automation, and production support. It also contributes proofs of concept, including AI-enabled workflows, mentors junior developers, and develops and revises project work plans. The role collaborates with business stakeholders, product owners, and technology teams to translate requirements into scalable solutions.

Requirements

At least 7 years of professional experience with C# and the Microsoft .NET stack, including .NET Framework and modern .NET, using Visual Studio or a related IDE.
Strong experience building RESTful Web APIs and backend services.
Hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating applications on Microsoft Azure, such as App Service, Functions, Azure SQL, Service Bus, and Key Vault.
Advanced SQL Server and T-SQL skills, including stored procedures and performance tuning.
Experience with Entity Framework and/or a micro-ORM such as Dapper.
Solid object-oriented fundamentals and working knowledge of design and architecture patterns; ability to create well-designed, reusable components.
Experience writing unit tests with mocking frameworks and building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, including automated build, test, and deployment; source control and branching strategies (Git/Azure DevOps); and release management.
Knowledge of secure coding standards and techniques for web applications and APIs, including secure handling of sensitive financial data.
Hands-on experience using AI coding tools for software engineering tasks, with judgment about when to trust, verify, or reject output and awareness of secure AI-tool use.
Working knowledge of distributed and microservice architecture concepts, including service boundaries, API design, and asynchronous messaging.
Experience developing in Agile/Scrum teams.
Excellent analytical and math skills.
Ability to work on multiple projects with minimal supervision and meet tight deadlines.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including translating business requirements into technical solutions and explaining complex information to technical and business audiences.
Bachelor's or Associate degree in an IT discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with SSIS and SSRS.
Hands-on experience with Claude Code.
Extensive experience designing, building, and operating microservice-based systems at scale.
Experience modernizing legacy .NET applications toward cloud-native and managed Azure services.
Experience integrating with investment platforms and market data or trading systems such as Bloomberg, GTSS, DTCC, FX Connect, or ProtoColl, or a background in investment management or financial systems.
Experience with Docker and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, Bicep, or ARM.
Experience with monitoring, logging, and observability tooling.
Familiarity with building or integrating LLM-powered features, prompt design, or agent-based workflows.
Familiarity with front-end frameworks such as Angular or React, or Node.js, sufficient to collaborate across the stack.
Microsoft development certifications.
Experience supporting legacy ColdFusion applications.
Creativity and strong attention to detail.
Exceptional customer service skills and professionalism with a diverse group of business users.
A positive, productive team-player attitude.
A genuine desire to keep learning as AI tooling and engineering practices evolve.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain backend components of Investment Management applications.
Modernize applications by refactoring legacy systems, reducing technical debt, and moving appropriate workloads to cloud-native and managed Azure services.
Promote automated testing, secure coding, CI/CD, observability, and performance optimization; maintain application reliability and maintainability throughout the software lifecycle.
Collaborate with business stakeholders, product owners, and technology teams to translate requirements into practical, scalable solutions.
Lead architecture and design of system implementations using established patterns and best practices, including microservices where appropriate.
Implement and customize solutions and integrate third-party products, market data, and trading platforms.
Enhance and maintain applications using .NET, T-SQL, and SSIS/SSRS.
Use AI coding tools to accelerate design, implementation, testing, code review, refactoring, and documentation while ensuring quality and security.
Build and improve release automation and infrastructure-as-code, participate in releases, and provide ongoing production support.
Build proofs of concept, including AI-enabled workflows, that may be leveraged across the enterprise.
Diagnose and resolve complex issues, including designing and implementing workarounds when needed.
Mentor and guide junior developers, including on responsible and effective AI-tool use.
Create and execute project work plans and revise them as needs change.