Technical Lead

TIAA•Iselin, NJ

1d•$130,000 - $154,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Technical Lead provides senior technical vision, architectural leadership, and delivery governance for TIAA's business-critical software platforms. Under general direction, this job owns architectural decision-making, SDLC governance, and production support ownership for a complex, externally-facing platform, while mentoring engineering teams and setting the technical standards that guide platform scalability, security, and quality. This job is considered the senior-most technical authority within its platform area and is accountable for the platform's long-term technical direction.

Requirements

5 or more years of experience with Java development (Java 17+), with demonstrated ownership of architecture and technical direction for enterprise platforms
Demonstrated experience owning SDLC governance, architectural decision-making, and API security standards for a complex, externally-facing platform
Proven ownership of Level 3 production support strategy for a business-critical, externally-facing system
Hands-on experience with cloud-native engineering: AWS EKS, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, Cloudbees, ArgoCD)
Demonstrated ability to define governance frameworks and quality/security guardrails for AI-assisted development tools
Exceptional track record of technical mentorship and leadership across engineering teams
Experience translating business and platform strategy into technical architecture and execution roadmaps

Nice To Haves

Financial services or insurance industry domain expertise, particularly annuity products, recordkeeping, or accumulation ledger systems
Message-based integration architecture experience (IBM MQ, Apache ActiveMQ Artemis, Kafka, or JMS)
Broader cloud infrastructure architecture experience: AWS (ECS, S3, Glue, Lambda), OpenShift, Terraform
Secrets management and authentication architecture (CyberArk Conjur, Kerberos, or equivalent)
Experience guiding platform strategy in the context of external distribution partnerships or multi-partner integration models
BPMN / workflow orchestration architecture (Flowable, Camunda, or similar)
Experience operating in Agile/Scrum environments with accountability for cross-team technical alignment

Responsibilities

Owns the technical vision and architectural roadmap for the Insurance Solutions Technology platform, ensuring the platform can scale securely to support SIA product portability and future distribution partnerships
Defines and governs API security standards, architectural decision-making processes, and SDLC quality gates across the platform
Owns Level 3 production support strategy, ensuring the platform's stability and resilience meet the demands of an externally-facing, partner-integrated system
Provides senior technical mentorship and leadership to the broader engineering team, elevating the team's collective technical capability
Serves as the team's primary authority on responsible AI adoption — defining governance, quality, and security guardrails for AI-assisted and AI-generated code
Partners with business, product, and partner integration stakeholders to translate TIAA's annuity market expansion strategy into a coherent, sustainable technical architecture
Guides the platform's technical evolution as TIAA's annuity products expand into retail and future markets