Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer Northwestern Mutual $144,000.00

• $216,000.

00 United States, Wisconsin, Milwaukee 720 E Wisconsin Ave (Show on map) May 12, 2026 Who we are At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative, and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference. We believe relationships are built on trust. That our lives and our work matter. These beliefs launched our company over 160 years ago. Today, they're just a few of the reasons why people choose to build careers at Northwestern Mutual. We're strong and growing. In a company with such a long and storied history, this may be the most exciting and important time to be a part of Northwestern Mutual. We invest in our people. We provide opportunities for employees to grow themselves, their career and in turn, our business. We care. We make a positive difference in our communities. Nationally, thousands have benefitted from our support of research and programs to fight childhood cancer. Each year, our Foundation, employees and financial representatives donate time, talent and financial support to causes they're passionate about. What you'll do As a Lead Software Engineer in Finance & Risk, you'll be enhancing our Enterprise Risk, Vendor Management, Corporate Audit, Anti-Fraud, and Resiliency experience and helping shape the future of our Risk platform. We work in a fast-paced and highly collaborative environment, embrace out-of-box thinking, instill engineering excellence, and focus on the highest priorities. We strive to foster safe spaces for our teams to share bold ideas, embrace experimentation, and pursue continuous learning. As a member of our engineering team, you will be finding innovative ways to develop resilient, sustainable, secure, aligned, and scalable solutions to create an exemplary experience for our user base while utilizing agile practices. As part of the test-centric software engineering culture at Northwestern Mutual, we are looking for a Lead Software Engineer with modern stack expertise, has working Dev Ops experience, and can play a vital part in designing and integrating with API infrastructure. You should have strong data engineering experience creating and leading big data challenges with cloud solutions that mine data and combine it with modern analytic tools while driving target sate architecture and aligning to Enterprise Data Strategy. Prior experience supporting and integrating vendor applications is a must. So is your ability to lead broader initiatives across functions, drive engineering excellence in delivery, and be a proven coach/mentor to others. Bring Your Best! What You'll bring to the role Demonstrates technical leadership to team and leads technical development and transformation Leads collaboration and integrations with third-party vendors Can solve complex problems independently with minimal supervision Establishes, aggregates, and shares team standards and best practices within department. Implements holistic solutions utilizes working relationships across teams within their division and across the enterprise Assesses and provides solutions to system-wide architectural problems. Designs, organizes, and executes high impact solutions across teams both within and outside their division. Ensures production stability, monitoring, and root cause analysis is executed for their products. Develops new integrations with APIs and incorporates event-driven design Strong requirements gathering and ability to document Lead automation efforts, champion unit test code coverage and other DORA metrics and fosters engineer excellence Leverage modern stack capabilities to transform our legacy processes and applications, align the team and delivery to target state architecture, ensuring adoption of integrated tech stacks, and elevate the quality and health of our systems Lead who will drive use case adoption for transformation and expansion of our Risk platform. Lead DevOps and risk remediation efforts affecting apps and processes in Finance & Risk Understands the interrelationships of different departments and guides development of diverse product sets. Mentors and guides junior engineers within respective division. Exhibits appetite for continuous learning and improvement Qualifications Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience 6-8 years professional experience required 5-8+ years of experience working with and leading teams using modern engineering tools, languages, and practices. Proven track record of successfully designing and delivering significant and impactful technology solutions. Demonstrated critical thinking, ownership mindset and continuous learning Experience developing and leading solution delivery using agile methods. Mentor for the team and department Advanced skillset in one or more technical platforms Strong communication skills capable of communicating between product, engineering, and the business Manages own time to meet objectives Ability to perform peer reviews on code and design Solid understanding of design patterns and architecture Successfully deals with ambiguity. Recognized as the go-to expert within the division or department. Ability to effectively communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences in varying forms and levels of detail. Expert for the organization in many of the technologies list in the technical skills

Technical Skills:

AWS Cloud Developer/Admin Certification AWS Glue Serverless Lambdas Python (w PySpark & vscode) Kafka Spring Boot Java Java Script NodeJS React Kotlin SQL AWS Aurora Postgres AWS Redshift AWS Kinesis DB2 UDB GitHub/Terraform/CICD Kubernetes, Docker, SonarQube, Bruno / APIs Vaults Informatica PowerBI Airflow Linux CTRL-M Erwin Splunk ServiceNow Snowflake Databricks Skills You'll have

Analytical Thinking:

Organizes and compares various aspects of a situation to comprehend and identify key or underlying complex issues through the use of quantitative data and analysis; leverages strong business acumen, problem solving, and interpersonal skills to think critically about situations from multiple perspectives and consistently seeks ways to improve processes.

Application Performance Management:

Ensures that critical applications meet established expectations for performance, availability, and customer or end-user experience. Confirms that SLAs are met and NFRs are addressed.

Cloud Technology:

Applies knowledge of cloud service platforms and delivery models to support, develop, adopt, secure, implement and evaluate end-to-end cloud solutions delivery and data storage instead of through traditional physical servers in a back office.

Cross Functional Partnering & Planning:

Facilitates collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning with individuals and teams from different functions within the organization, and who have different areas of expertise, to achieve common goals.

IT Strategy:

Leverages knowledge of the short and long-term IT strategy to identify, mitigate, and resolve immediate and future business challenges; uses critical thinking and knowledge of business demand to plan, prioritize, and execute high impact initiatives and programs that keep the end user experience at the forefront.

Learning Agility & Critical Thinking:

Pursues learning and obtains knowledge continuously in relevant fields, methods, or technologies in current and future practices; continuously utilizes critical thinking to identify opportunities, execute solutions, and measure impact to constantly improve existing practices and processes based on feedback, lessons learned, and market trends.

Software Development:

Creates and maintains applications, frameworks, and other software components via designing, programming, testing, and bug fixing; writes and maintains source code for all processes in the software development life cycle and facilitates the automation and orchestration of disparate systems. Leverage TDD (Test Driven Development) and BDD (Behavior Driven Development) methodologies to ensure unit, integration, and end-to-end testing with appropriate level of coverage is met.

Software Problem Solving:

Conducts in-depth analysis of technology needs, issues, and roadblocks within assigned scope, applies experience and expertise to apply best practices, explore the "art of possible", and deliver blueprints for the most effective and efficient solutions. Detects and removes existing and potential errors in software code or a system that can cause it to behave unexpectedly or operate incorrectly. Leverages common software tools/debuggers and logical thinking for root causing issue.

Strategic Vision & Planning:

Develops, defines, and executes strategic vision for the team and business function they manage with an understanding of the enterprise's goals as a people manager; defines business planning, strategy formulation, and management engine to support strategic vision.

Technical Problem Solving:

Conducts in-depth analysis of technology needs, issues, and roadblocks within assigned scope, applies best practice based on experience and expertise, explores the "art of possible". Solves problems effectively and gains alignment on the path forward. Defines, understands, and documents what is being solved for.

Compensation Range:

Pay Range

• Start:

  $144,000.00 Pay Range

•

End:

$216,000.00

Geographic Specific Pay Structure:

Structure 110: $158,400.00 USD

• $237,600.00 USD Structure 115: $165,600.00 USD
• $248,400.

00 USD We believe in fairness and transparency. It's why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you're living in California, York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more. Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients' interests at the center of all we do. Get started now! Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives. Skills Analytical Thinking (NM)

• Advanced, Customer Centricity (NM)
• Advanced, Strategic Thinking (NM)
• Advanced, Cross Functional Partnering & Planning (NM)
• Advanced, Root Cause Analysis & Decision Quality (NM)
• Advanced, Application Security (NM)
• Advanced, Release Management (NM)
• Advanced, DevOps (NM)
• Advanced, Talent Development & Planning (NM)
• Intermediate, Software Problem Solving (NM)
• Advanced, Technical Problem Solving (NM)
• Advanced, Coaching & Mentoring (NM)
• Intermediate, Cloud Technology (NM)
• Advanced, IT Strategy (NM)
• Intermediate, Business Application (NM)
• Advanced, Business Influence (NM)
• Intermediate, Software Development (NM)
• Expert, Strategic Vision & Planning (NM)
• Intermediate, Accountability (NM)
• Intermediate, Adaptive Communication (NM)
• Expert, Data Literacy (NM)
• Advanced, Learning Agility & Critical Thinking (NM)
• Advanced, Application Performance Management (NM)
• Advanced

FIND YOUR FUTURE

We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging. Flexible work schedules Concierge service Comprehensive benefits Employee resource groups