Associate Director Staff Engineer (GraphQL, Java, Kotlin, Nodejs)

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve scalable, resilient architectures for communication platforms supporting customer engagement (voice, messaging, digital channels).
• Design solutions aligned to industry-specific requirements:
  • Financial Services: security, compliance, auditability
  • Communications: real-time processing, high availability
  • MarTech: personalization, event-driven engagement
• Ensure alignment with enterprise target-state architecture and platform strategy.
• Design and implement backend services, APIs, and integration layers.
• Build and deploy applications using containerized environments and Kubernetes orchestration.
• Develop production-grade code, prototypes, and reference implementations.
• Architect API-first ecosystems, including GraphQL and RESTful services.
• Design event-driven and streaming architectures to support real-time communication and marketing workflows.
• Integrate with enterprise platforms such as:
  • CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce)
  • Contact center / CPaaS platforms
  • Marketing automation and customer data platforms
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure solution alignment and execution.
• Act as a thought partner, introducing innovative approaches and improving system design quality.
• Influence decisions across teams without formal authority.
• Establish and enforce architecture standards, reusable patterns, and engineering guardrails.
• Drive simplification, scalability, and reduction of technical debt.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend pragmatic adoption aligned to business value.

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong expertise in backend architecture and distributed systems design.
• Hands-on experience with:
  • Kubernetes and containerization (Docker, orchestration patterns)
  • GraphQL and modern API architectures (REST, event-driven systems)
  • Microservices and cloud-native platforms
  • Observability: Distributed tracing (X-Ray/OpenTelemetry), structured logging, metrics/alerting pipelines.
  • Messaging & Orchestration: SQS/EventBridge or equivalents (Pub/Sub, Service Bus); DLQs; workflow engines.
  • CI/CD: Automated pipelines with tools including Github Actions, Jenkins or equivalent experience.
• Experience building or supporting real-time or high-throughput systems.
• Proficiency in backend technologies (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Node.js, Go, or similar).
• Bachelor's Degree in Information systems, Computer Science or a related field.

Domain Experience (Preferred)

Candidates should have experience in one or more of the following:

• Financial Services
  • Secure, compliant systems (PII, PCI, regulatory constraints)
  • Transactional platforms (payments, lending, servicing)
• Communications / MarTech / Contact Center
  • Low-latency, high-availability distributed systems
  • Personalization engines, campaign orchestration
  • Voice, messaging, IVR, or omnichannel engagement platforms

Architecture & Engineering Capabilities

• Ability to operate across strategic architecture and hands-on implementation.
• Strong grounding in:
  • scalability, resiliency, and performance engineering
  • API lifecycle and governance
  • system integration and orchestration patterns
• Experience aligning solutions to enterprise target-state architecture.

Personal Attributes

• Self-starter: Proactively drives outcomes with minimal oversight.
• Thought provocateur: Challenges existing paradigms and elevates architectural thinking.
• Collaborative: Builds alignment across engineering, product, and architecture teams.
• Pragmatic: Balances long-term vision with near-term delivery needs.
• Influential communicator: Clearly conveys complex technical concepts to varied stakeholders.