Senior Engineering Lead

Your opportunity

At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us “challenge the status quo” and transform the finance industry together.

We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location(s).

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without employer sponsorship.

We are seeking a Senior Engineering Lead(Individual Contributor) responsible for designing, building, and delivering scalable, high-performance, and secure software systems. This role requires deep engineering expertise and strong system design capability, combined with hands-on development and leadership. The candidate will drive AI-enabled SDLC practices to improve engineering productivity, quality, and speed of delivery.

Key Responsibilities

System Design & Architecture (Core Focus)

• Lead design of large-scale distributed systems (high throughput, low latency)
• Define architecture for scalability, resiliency, and performance (P95/P99 driven)
• Make key decisions on data flow, APIs, fault tolerance, and system boundaries
• Review and approve designs across components and services

Deep Engineering (Hands-on)

• Build and optimize backend services and APIs (Java/.NET or similar)
• Solve complex engineering problems in multi-threaded and distributed environments
• Drive performance tuning, debugging, and system optimization
• Contribute critical production code

AI-Enabled SDLC

• Drive adoption of AI-assisted development (Copilot, agentic workflows)
• Improve productivity through:
• AI-based code generation
• Automated testing
• Code review acceleration
• Standardize AI-first development practices across the team

Delivery & Execution

• Own end-to-end delivery: design → build → test → release → operate
• Partner with Product, QA, and Operations
• Ensure high-quality, on-time delivery of features

Engineering Excellence

• Enforce best practices in:
• Code quality
• Design patterns
• Test automation
• Improve CI/CD pipelines and release processes

Reliability, Security & Performance

• Build systems that are:
• Highly available and fault tolerant
• Secure and compliant
• Performance optimized at scale
• Identify risks early and implement mitigation strategies

Team Leadership

• Mentor engineers and guide technical decisions
• Lead design discussions and code reviews
• Build a strong engineering culture focused on quality and ownership

What you have

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 5+ years in technical leadership role
• Proven experience building large-scale distributed systems
• Strong backend development (Java/.NET or similar)
• Deep understanding of:
  • System Design
  • Scalability
  • Distributed systems
  • Performance optimization
• Experience building APIs and microservices
• Strong Agile experience
• Experience with CI/CD and test automation

Preferred Qualifications:

• Cloud experience (AWS/GCP/Azure)
• Experience with high-scale or mission-critical systems
• Exposure to security or identity systems
• Experience or strong interest in: 

  • AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Copilot)

  • Automation-driven SDLC

  • Developer productivity improvements

 In addition to the salary range, this role is also eligible for bonus or incentive opportunities.