Lead Full Stack Software Engineer

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

As a Lead Full Stack Software Engineer, you will play a leadership role across the full software development lifecycle—from requirements, solution architecture, and technical design through hands-on development, deployment, production support, modernization, and continuous optimization. You will lead the design and delivery of modern, scalable microservices and web applications while guiding the evolution and modernization of legacy systems as needed.

This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who enjoys solving complex technical challenges end-to-end, shaping technical direction, improving performance and reliability in production environments, and mentoring engineers while partnering closely with architects and stakeholders. You will work in a collaborative Agile environment alongside engineers, architects, product partners, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, high-quality software systems at scale.

What You Will Do

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of scalable full stack applications and microservices, building modern front-end experiences using React and/or Angular and back-end services using Java and Spring Boot.
• Own and lead delivery of complex features, services, and technical initiatives end-to-end in a fast-paced environment while balancing multiple priorities, contributing to architecture and carrying solutions through the full software development lifecycle from requirements through production support.
• Provide technical leadership for solution design, code quality, scalability, performance, reliability, security, maintainability, modernization, developer productivity, and long-term extensibility while influencing reusable patterns and engineering standards.
• Write high-quality, maintainable code and champion engineering best practices including automated testing, code reviews, clean coding standards, secure development, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across application, integration, infrastructure, and data layers, including root-cause analysis and short- and long-term corrective actions.
• Participate in a shared on-call rotation and provide production support as needed while improving operational readiness, monitoring, documentation, and support practices.
• Provide mentorship and technical guidance to engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing, while raising the technical bar and fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Collaborate with architects, product partners, and business stakeholders to translate business needs into secure, scalable, and supportable technical solutions while contributing to technical roadmaps and continuous improvement efforts across the team.

What You Will Bring

• 8+ years professional software engineering experience, excluding internships. A firm minimum.
• Strong Java / Spring Boot backend experience with REST APIs and microservices.
• Strong Angular or React experience.
• True full stack ownership across frontend, backend, database, deployment, and production support.
• Solid SQL / database ability, including practical query writing and application/database integration.
• Lead-level architecture/design ownership, including HLD/LLD, service boundaries, API contracts, scalability, reliability, and tradeoff reasoning.
• Real production support/debugging experience, including root-cause analysis, monitoring/observability, and short- and long-term corrective actions.
• Strong technical leadership: mentoring, code reviews, design reviews, reusable patterns, engineering standards, and delivery guidance.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management: clarifies ambiguity, challenges requirements constructively, and aligns technical and business stakeholders.
• Agile delivery experience, including refinement, estimation, sprint planning, demos, and iterative delivery.
• Experience working in cloud environments and CI/CD pipelines.

Preferred

• AWS cloud experience is preferred.
• Docker, Kubernetes, ECS/EKS, CI/CD, Git-based workflows, deployment automation.
• Observability tools such as Splunk, Datadog, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, or CloudWatch.
• Event-driven or integration experience such as Kafka, JMS, SQS, or REST-based integrations.
• API/security experience: OAuth2, JWT, TLS, secrets management, secure coding, vulnerability remediation.
• Financial services, retirement, banking, insurance, healthcare, or regulated enterprise experience.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Science, Engineering, or a related technical field preferred.
• Equivalent professional software engineering experience is acceptable.
• Other engineering degrees are acceptable if the candidate has strong, clearly evidenced software engineering experience.

Screening guardrails

• Evidence must be shown in work history, project outcomes, or interviews.
• We want real-world experience for the skills, skills-list-only evidence is not sufficient.

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.