Staff Software Engineer

Zinnia•New York City, NY

About The Position

Zinnia is the leading technology platform for accelerating life and annuities growth. With innovative enterprise solutions and data insights, Zinnia simplifies the experience of buying, selling, and administering insurance products. All of which enables more people to protect their financial futures. Our success is driven by a commitment to three core values: be bold, team up, deliver value – and that we do. Zinnia has over $180 billion in assets under administration, serves 100+ carrier clients, 2500 distributors and partners, and over 2 million policyholders. As a Staff Engineer, you will execute on our product vision for modern, frictionless, and scalable API-first systems, which collectively deliver the best end-to-end Life & Annuities solution in the industry. You will partner with fellow engineers to create a reusable, predictable, and discoverable design and development framework, enabling rapid, consistent, and maintainable solutions across the enterprise. We are seeking a team player with leadership experience, exceptional API security expertise, and a proven track record of successful delivery. You combine architectural vision with hands-on coding skills, ensuring solutions are both strategically sound and practically implemented.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
10+ years of software development experience, with 4+ years in a staff engineer, architect, or technical lead role.
Strong proficiency with .NET (C#) and JavaScript/TypeScript (NestJS, NextJS).
Proven ability to architect large-scale API solutions while also contributing as a hands-on coder.
Strong expertise in event-driven architecture and pub/sub messaging patterns, with experience in event streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka.
Expertise in API management and gateway technologies (e.g., Apigee, Kong) and proven ability to integrate with enterprise IAM systems for secure API access.
Experience designing and maintaining versioned, external/internal-facing APIs.
Cloud-native development experience with AWS services such as Lambda, EC2, S3, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SNS/SQS, and RDS.
Strong knowledge of relational databases (e.g., MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra).
Working knowledge of DevOps practices (CI/CD pipelines, environment provisioning, monitoring) and containerization technologies such as Docker.
Strong understanding of software design principles, patterns, and API governance.
Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment.
Excellent communication, critical thinking, and leadership skills with the ability to influence and mentor teams.
Commitment to continuous learning and staying up to date with the latest technologies in software development.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Java and related technologies
Knowledge of the Life Insurance & Annuities domain.

Responsibilities

Architect and build: Design, document, and evangelize API standards and best practices across all Zinnia APIs.
Hands-on coding: Write high-quality, maintainable, and performant code to build reusable frameworks and services.
Lead API delivery: Partner with and guide the Enterprise API team to deliver scalable and highly performant enterprise-grade APIs.
API governance: Implement API gateway capabilities (traceability, monitoring, security, analytics) and recommend improvements for the full API lifecycle.
API documentation: Maintain high-quality API documentation using Swagger or similar tools to ensure clarity, consistency, and ease of use for internal and external consumers
Code quality: Conduct code reviews and ensure alignment with architectural principles, standards, and design patterns.
Technical guidance: Make critical design decisions, provide architectural oversight, and mentor developers.
Integration: Work with IAM solutions and cloud-native services to secure and scale APIs.
Collaboration: Partner cross-functionally (product, security, DevOps, infra) to ensure API strategy aligns with enterprise goals.
Innovation: Stay current with emerging technologies and bring ideas to improve scalability, performance, and developer experience