Vice President, Credit Engineering Lead

About the Role

Ares is seeking a Vice President, Credit Engineering Lead to lead the design, development, and delivery of technology solutions supporting the firm's global credit investment platform. Reporting to the Head of Credit Technology, this role will serve as the engineering leader for the Credit Technology organization, responsible for building and evolving software platforms that support the credit investment lifecycle across deal origination, underwriting, portfolio monitoring, risk management, and investment analytics. This is a highly hands-on leadership role where the successful candidate will actively contribute to software development alongside the engineering team while establishing engineering standards, modern architecture patterns, and software delivery best practices.

The ideal candidate will bring strong experience building enterprise-grade applications within financial services environments, with deep expertise in modern full-stack development, cloud-native architectures, microservices, data platforms, messaging systems, and software engineering best practices. Experience supporting credit investment, lending, portfolio management, or alternative asset management platforms is strongly preferred.

This individual will partner closely with Product Management, Credit Investment Professionals, Portfolio Management teams, Investment Operations, Data & AI teams, and broader Investment Technology leadership to deliver scalable, resilient, and high-performing technology solutions that support the firm's growing credit business.

Responsibilities

• Engineering Leadership & Team Development
  • Lead and mentor a team of software engineers supporting Credit Technology initiatives.
  • Establish engineering standards, development practices, coding guidelines, and quality controls.
  • Foster a culture of technical excellence, accountability, continuous improvement, and collaboration.
  • Provide hands-on coaching and technical guidance to team members.
  • Drive adoption of agile development practices and modern engineering methodologies.
• Hands-On Software Engineering
  • Actively contribute to software development and remain deeply involved in implementation decisions.
  • Design, develop, test, deploy, and support business-critical applications supporting credit investment workflows.
  • Participate in code reviews, architecture reviews, troubleshooting, and production support activities.
  • Lead development efforts across front-end, backend, integration, and data layers.
  • Ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure, and aligned with enterprise engineering standards.
• Platform Architecture & System Design
  • Design and evolve modern cloud-native architectures supporting the credit technology ecosystem.
  • Define architecture standards for distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, and microservices.
  • Drive engineering decisions related to scalability, resiliency, performance, observability, and operational excellence.
• Application Development & Technology Delivery
  • Lead development across:
    • Credit deal management platforms
    • Portfolio management solutions
    • Credit analytics platforms
    • Workflow automation solutions
    • Investment data services and APIs
    • Reporting and analytics platforms
  • Ensure engineering teams deliver scalable technology solutions supporting:
    • Deal sourcing and pipeline management
    • Underwriting workflows
    • Investment committee processes
    • Portfolio monitoring
    • Risk analytics
    • Investment reporting
    • Investment data management
• Cloud & Platform Engineering
  • Architect and deploy applications using modern cloud-native technologies.
  • Implement containerized solutions utilizing Kubernetes and cloud platform services.
  • Drive modernization efforts focused on cloud adoption, scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency.
  • Ensure proper observability, monitoring, logging, and operational support across production environments.
• Integration & Event-Driven Architecture
  • Design and implement API-first architectures and integration frameworks.
  • Leverage messaging platforms, event streaming, and asynchronous processing patterns to support scalable and resilient business platforms.
  • Build solutions that integrate seamlessly across investment, data, and operational platforms.
  • Partner with Data & AI teams to enable high-quality data flows and analytics capabilities.
• Software Development Lifecycle & Governance
  • Own the end-to-end Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
  • Establish CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, release management processes, and deployment standards.
  • Drive improvements in software quality, development velocity, security, and operational stability.
  • Ensure compliance with enterprise security, governance, regulatory, and operational resiliency requirements.
• Business Partnership & Stakeholder Management
  • Partner closely with Product Management to prioritize engineering initiatives and deliver business outcomes.
  • Serve as a trusted technology advisor to credit investment professionals, asset management teams, and broader Investment Technology partners.
  • Translate complex credit investment and operational requirements into scalable technical solutions.
  • Communicate architecture decisions, delivery plans, risks, and engineering tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Requirements

• Experience
  • 9-12 years of progressive software engineering experience delivering enterprise technology solutions.
  • 4+ years leading software engineering teams, technical organizations, or major technology initiatives.
  • Demonstrated experience leading end-to-end software delivery within financial services environments.
  • Experience supporting investment management, asset management, capital markets, banking, or alternative investment platforms.
  • Strong preference for candidates with experience supporting direct lending, private credit, syndicated loans, CLOs, portfolio management, credit risk, or alternative asset management platforms.
  • Proven track record building and operating business-critical applications within regulated environments.
  • Experience partnering directly with product management, investment professionals, portfolio managers, operations teams, and senior business stakeholders.
  • Experience leading modernization, platform transformation, organizational change, or cloud adoption initiatives.
  • Experience mentoring and developing engineering talent.
• Technical Skills
  • Advanced Java development expertise.
  • Advanced React and TypeScript expertise.
  • Deep expertise with relational and non-relational database technologies.
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
  • Strong API and integration design expertise.
  • Strong knowledge of messaging and streaming technologies.
  • Experience with cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Experience with Kubernetes and containerized application platforms.
  • Experience designing highly scalable, highly available enterprise applications.
• Software Engineering Excellence
  • Deep understanding of software architecture, engineering design patterns, and engineering best practices.
  • Strong SDLC, CI/CD, automated testing, and DevOps expertise.
  • Experience defining engineering standards and code quality practices.
  • Strong troubleshooting, performance optimization, and operational support capabilities.
  • Ability to balance architecture, delivery, quality, and hands-on development responsibilities.
• Leadership & Collaboration
  • Hands-on technical leader comfortable contributing code alongside the engineering team.
  • Strong architecture, system design, and technical decision-making capabilities.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
  • Ability to build alignment across technology, product, investment, and operations teams.
  • Ability to influence engineering direction through leadership, expertise, and sound judgment.
  • High level of ownership, accountability, and execution focus.
• Functional Familiarity
  • Familiarity with DealCloud or other pipeline management systems, credit systems such as Allvue, or WSO is a plus.

Pay

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $250,000 - $275,000. Total compensation may also include a discretionary performance-based bonus.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical/Rx, Dental, and Vision plans.
• 401(k) program with company match.
• Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA) and Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSA) with company contribution.
• Basic and Voluntary Life Insurance.
• Long-Term Disability (LTD) and Short-Term Disability (STD) insurance.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Commuter Benefits plan for parking and transit.
• Access to a world-class medical advisory team.
• Mental health app that includes coaching, therapy, and psychiatry.
• Mindfulness and wellbeing app.
• Financial wellness benefit that includes access to a financial advisor.
• New parent leave, reproductive and adoption assistance, and emergency backup care.
• Matching gift program and education sponsorship program.