Senior Software Engineer – Backend Platforms, Vice President (Wealth Custody & Clearing)

State Street•Princeton, NJ

2d•$125,000 - $215,000

About The Position

State Street’s Wealth Custody & Clearing (WC&C) business provides custody, clearing, and platform services to wealth managers, broker dealers, and financial institutions. The role provides technical leadership across backend and data platforms, shaping architecture, engineering standards, and reliability for mission-critical wealth technology. As a senior technical leader, the engineer will architect, design, and lead high-scale, low-latency distributed systems in a cloud-native environment, influencing architecture and engineering practices across multiple teams and domains. The role partners with product, data, risk, and business stakeholders to deliver systems that meet stringent requirements for accuracy, availability, security, and regulatory compliance.

Requirements

At least 9 years of backend software engineering experience, including a strong record of building and scaling distributed systems.
Demonstrated experience operating at a Staff or Principal Engineer level and influencing multiple teams or technical domains.
Expertise designing systems with high availability, fault tolerance, and strong data consistency guarantees.
Track record of owning large-scale architecture decisions and long-term system evolution.
Experience in production-critical environments where reliability, accuracy, and operational excellence are paramount.
Strong understanding of wealth management, brokerage, or financial services platforms.
Experience building systems requiring high precision, full auditability, and regulatory compliance.
Deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and microservices-based architectures.
Strong experience with cloud platforms and container orchestration; AWS is preferred and Kubernetes is specified.
Proficiency with PostgreSQL, distributed data stores, and caching layers.
Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures, messaging systems such as Kafka, and API design.
Strong understanding of system design tradeoffs involving consistency, latency, scalability, and resiliency.
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or a related field; equivalent practical experience will be considered.

Nice To Haves

Working knowledge of financial regulations or standards such as SEC, FINRA, or GDPR.
Familiarity with portfolio management and rebalancing, trading systems and order lifecycle management, market data ingestion and processing, account structures, tax optimization, or retirement products.
Experience with AWS.

Responsibilities

Architect and lead development of high-scale, low-latency backend systems supporting custody, clearing, and wealth platforms.
Define and enforce engineering standards, architectural patterns, and system design principles across backend teams.
Drive the long-term technical vision and architecture for distributed systems and data platforms.
Partner with product, data, and business leaders to translate complex requirements into scalable technical solutions.
Mentor senior engineers and raise the overall engineering bar across the organization.
Lead critical incident response, performance optimization, and system reliability initiatives for production platforms.
Evaluate, recommend, and introduce technologies aligned with WC&C’s strategic and regulatory objectives.
Ensure systems meet enterprise expectations for resiliency, observability, auditability, and security.

Benefits

401(k) retirement savings plan with company match
Medical, dental, vision, basic life, long-term disability, and optional insurance coverage
Paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, short-term disability, and family care leave
Employee Assistance Program
Eligibility for annual performance-based incentive awards, with exclusions for certain sales roles
Eligibility for certain tax-advantaged savings plans
Inclusive development opportunities
Flexible work-life support
Paid volunteer days
Employee networks