Manager, Software Engineering - Full Stack Customer Applications

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze®, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Early Warning follows a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

The Software Engineering Manager leads a full-stack engineering team that designs, builds, delivers and supports customer-facing web applications and the backend services behind them. The role has a strong user-interface focus, with hands-on leadership of modern front-end engineering, and also owns the APIs, integrations and data flows that make the experience work end to end. The Manager provides technical leadership and architecture guidance, is accountable for delivery, quality, security and production support, and leads the team's migration of applications and services to the cloud and its adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools such as Claude Code. The Manager is also responsible for the career planning, mentoring, goal setting and performance management of the team. The Manager also contributes to the continued maturity of the Agile SDLC within Software Engineering.

Essential Functions

Technical Leadership & Architecture

- Own the technical direction of the team's applications across the user interface, backend services, integrations and data layers.

- Set front-end engineering standards for a modern component-based framework (e.g., React with TypeScript), including shared component libraries, performance, accessibility and testing.

- Guide the design of secure, scalable backend services and APIs (REST and event-driven) and their integration with internal systems and third-party platforms.

- Define integration approaches for enterprise identity (single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, role- and attribute-based access) and for customer-relationship / service-management platforms, using standards-based, loosely coupled designs so vendors can be replaced with limited rework.

- Make and document key architecture decisions (e.g., through Architecture Decision Records), including build-versus-buy and build-versus-configure trade-offs.

- Review designs and code, and stay hands-on enough to unblock engineers and maintain technical credibility.

Cloud Migration & Modernization

- Lead the team's migration of applications, services and data from on-premises or legacy hosting to the cloud (AWS preferred), from assessment and target architecture through cutover and decommissioning.

- Define migration approach and sequencing for each workload (rehost, replatform, refactor, retire), balancing customer impact, risk, cost and delivery commitments.

- Design cloud-native, resilient and cost-aware architectures, including infrastructure as code, containerization or serverless where appropriate, autoscaling, and multi-AZ availability and disaster recovery.

- Plan and execute data migration, integration cutover and rollback strategies with minimal customer disruption, and validate performance, security and compliance before and after each cutover.

- Establish cloud operations practices for the team, including observability, cost monitoring (FinOps), and shared-responsibility security controls.

AI-Assisted Engineering (Claude Code Adoption)

- Lead adoption of AI coding assistants, including Claude Code, across the team's development lifecycle: design exploration, code and test generation, code review, refactoring, documentation, and migration/modernization work.

- Define team standards and guardrails for responsible use, including human review of all AI-generated changes, no secrets, credentials or Restricted/Confidential data in prompts or generated code, adherence to dependency and vulnerability policies, and clear attribution of AI-assisted commits for audit.

- Coach engineers on effective prompting, project context files, and agentic workflows; share working patterns across the team and the broader Software Engineering organization.

- Measure and report the impact of AI-assisted engineering on delivery speed, quality and cost, and adjust practices based on results.

Delivery & Operations

- Lead the team to meet project commitments, surfacing risks, dependencies and trade-offs early.

- Translate product goals and customer outcomes into a sequenced technical plan in partnership with Product and UX.

- Direct the identification, enhancement and automation of testing processes (unit, integration, end-to-end, performance); enforce test policies and quality control standards across the development lifecycle.

- Drive CI/CD, release readiness and operational excellence, including monitoring, alerting and incident response for the team's production services, in both existing and cloud-hosted environments during migration.

- Ensure systems meet service level agreements and audit requirements.

Security & Compliance

- Embed secure development practices: secrets management, dependency and vulnerability management, data classification and masking of confidential data, and audit-ready change records.

- Comply with all security policies and procedures to maintain the highest level of system and data confidentiality, integrity and availability, and support applicable regulatory and audit requirements (e.g., PCI-DSS, SOC 2).

People Leadership

- Provide resource management by participating in hiring, coordinating project assignments, setting goals, and documenting and executing annual performance evaluations.

- Provide leadership and guidance for professional development, including training plans, mentoring strategies and hands-on coaching across front-end and backend skills.

- Build a collaborative team culture focused on ownership, quality and customer outcomes.

Collaboration & Process

- Serve as the main engineering liaison between Software Engineering and other departments (Product, UX, Operations, Support, Information Security and business stakeholders); maintain open communication with all project stakeholders.

- Enhance and mature the Agile SDLC by applying industry best practices and regularly reviewing the usefulness of process steps and artifacts.

- Contribute to the vision, organization and leadership of the Software Engineering department.

- Keep management informed of department progress, problems and solutions.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

- BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

- Eight (8) or more years of professional software engineering experience, with at least three (3) years in a leadership capacity (team lead or manager).

- Hands-on experience building production web applications with a modern front-end framework such as React and TypeScript, including component design, state management, testing and performance.

- Experience designing and building backend services and REST APIs in an enterprise environment (e.g., Java/Spring Boot, Node.js or similar), with an understanding of scalability, reliability and security.

- Experience integrating applications with enterprise identity providers using open standards (OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML) and with CRM / service-management or other third-party platforms through their APIs.

- Experience with relational and/or NoSQL data stores.

- Experience planning and leading the migration of applications or services to the public cloud (AWS preferred), including infrastructure as code, cloud-native design, data migration and production cutover.

- Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants (such as Claude Code) in day-to-day engineering, and the ability to lead a team in adopting them safely and effectively.

- Experience with CI/CD, automated testing and monitoring/observability practices.

- Proven experience with Agile methodologies, practices and procedures.

- Proven management and leadership skills in leading software engineering teams and working across an organization.

- Ability to work effectively in cross-functional groups, handle multiple deadline-driven priorities in a fast-paced environment, and generate results.

- Strong sense of ownership, urgency and drive; able to explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience designing vendor-neutral integration layers or migrating between platforms (identity, CRM, messaging).

- Experience leading large-scale cloud migrations in a regulated environment, including landing zone, networking and security design, and AWS or equivalent certification.

- Experience establishing AI-assisted development guidelines, governance and adoption metrics for an engineering team.

- Experience using AI agents to accelerate legacy code analysis, refactoring and test creation during modernization efforts.

- Experience with B2B customer identity, delegated administration and multi-tenant data access.

- Experience with design systems and accessibility.

- Experience with event-driven architecture, workflow automation and bulk/batch processing.

- Exposure to AI-enabled features such as intelligent search or conversational assistance.

- Experience in FinTech, payments or fraud/risk environments; PCI-DSS or SOC 2 exposure.

The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow instructions and perform other related duties as assigned by their supervisor.

Physical Requirements

Working conditions consist of a normal office environment.  Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours.  Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching.  Must be able to lift10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently.  Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $124,000 - $186,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.
This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.

Early Warning Services LLC is a proud participant in E-Verify, a federal program to help ensure a legal and authorized workforce. As part of our hiring process, we electronically verify the employment eligibility of all new hires through E-Verify. For more information on your rights and responsibilities under E-Verify please visit Home | E-Verify.