Job Description

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.

The Senior Software Engineer is a seasoned professional responsible for implementing complex software systems, leading development projects, and providing technical expertise. They are key contributors to the architecture and innovation of software products.

Empower’s team powers the retail account opening platform that welcomes new prospects, transitioning them into valued clients. As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll ship high-quality Java/Spring Boot services, raise the bar on code health and testing, and help evolve our AWS-native architecture. This role is hands-on: you’ll design and implement features end-to-end, improve reliability and performance, and mentor teammates through reviews and pairing.

Key Responsibilities

• Strong experience in Java, Spring Boot, JDBC, and MySQL

• Hands-on experience with AWS services, including EKS, SQS, S3, SES, and RDS

• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins, Maven, Artifactory, and GitLab

• Proven ability to design, build, and maintain REST APIs; exposure to or interest in gRPC

• Solid understanding of agile development, including scrum and sprints.

• Demonstrated ability to optimize and tune system performance

• Strong background in metrics, logging, observability tools, and improving operational visibility.

• Commitment to high-quality code with comprehensive automated testing; expectation of testing all new code.

• Excellent communication skills; able to collaborate clearly across teams.

• Willingness and ability to participate in PagerDuty on-call rotation

Qualifications

• Experience: 5–8+ years of backend engineering delivering distributed systems; fintech or other regulated domains a plus.

• Java expertise: Strong command of Java and Spring Boot—data structures, concurrency, profiling, and robust testing.

• AWS proficiency: Practical experience with DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS/FIFO, and IAM roles/policies.

• Infrastructure as code: Working knowledge of Terraform for repeatable environments.

• Containers & orchestration: Solid Docker skills; exposure to Kubernetes operations/tuning preferred.

• CI/CD & DevSecOps: Jenkins or GitLab CI pipeline design integrating functional tests, static analysis, vulnerability scanning, and performance testing.

• Collaboration & habits: Bias toward action, accountability, clear documentation, and constructive code reviews

Nice-to-haves

• Experience modernizing monoliths into event-driven or streaming architectures.

• Deeper Kubernetes experience (operators/service mesh).

• Background in financial services or other regulated industries.

• Experience with Microsoft Graph API, Microsoft Bookings, Microsoft RBAC, and Salesforce integration.

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.