Investment Systems Application Engineer - IV,- Vanguard Personalized Indexing

About the role

This role is expected to operate at a senior engineer level with hands-on coding, influencing architecture, mentoring junior engineers, and driving system reliability for mission-critical investment platforms.

Core Responsibilities

• Backend & Platform Engineering
  • Design and build scalable backend services and APIs supporting portfolio construction, optimization, trading, and analytics workflows
  • Develop high-performance, production-grade systems using Java and/or Python with strong focus on reliability and maintainability
  • Arcitect and implement microservices and event-driven systems to support high-volume, latency-sensitive workloads
  • Ensure application performance, scalability, resiliency, and cost efficiency across distributed systems
  • Integrate internal and third-party systems, ensuring seamless interoperability and data consistency
• Technical Leadership & System Design
  • Provide senior-level system design, architecture guidance, and technical direction across backend and platform components
  • Lead design and code reviews, ensuring alignment with engineering standards and architectural principles
  • Evaluate and recommend technology solutions, design patterns, and implementation approaches
  • Anticipate system and platform risks; proactively design solutions to prevent production issues
  • Mentor engineers and elevate technical execution across the team
• Investment Systems & Domain Alignment
  • Develop a deep understanding of investment management workflows, including portfolios, trading lifecycle, and data pipelines
  • Design systems that support front, middle, and back office functions while maintaining strong controls and auditability
  • Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions aligned with investment processes
  • Ensure systems meet accuracy, consistency, and regulatory expectations for financial applications
• Cloud & Engineering Practices
  • Build and operate cloud-native services on AWS using containerized architectures and Kubernetes
  • Drive adoption of CI/CD, automated testing, and infrastructure-as-code practices
  • Improve observability, monitoring, and operational readiness across platform components
  • Contribute to architectural evolution toward scalable, cloud-native systems
• SDLC & Operational Excellence
  • Ensure the viability and quality of investment systems deliverables through rigorous testing and validation
  • Lead and participate in design, code, and test inspections across the SDLC
  • Support production systems, including incident response, root cause analysis, and remediation
  • Ensure compliance with Information Technology and Information Security policies
  • Promote continuous improvement in engineering practices, standards, and system reliability

Qualifications

• Minimum of 8+ years of experience, including significant experience building investment, wealth management, or financial systems
• Strong backend engineering expertise in Java and/or Python
• Deep understanding of investment domain concepts including portfolios, trading workflows, market data, and investment analytics
• Proven experience designing and building scalable distributed systems and APIs
• Experience with microservices architectures, messaging systems, and asynchronous processing patterns
• Strong experience with cloud-native platforms, particularly AWS
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes preferred)
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership and influence system design decisions
• Strong problem-solving and production support experience in high-availability environments

Education

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience

Special Factors

• Sponsorship

About Vanguard

Vanguard is an equal opportunity employer. Vanguard is committed to providing all crew members a working environment that is free from discrimination, prejudice and bias. Through this Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy, Vanguard reaffirms its commitment to equal employment opportunity for all applicants and crew members without regard to race, color, national origin or ancestry, religion, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, veteran or military status. In addition, Vanguard prohibits discrimination based on genetic information, as well as any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.

Empowered to learn, grow, and thrive

• Rajesh D.
• Akua A.
• Diane T.