Key Responsibilities and Duties
- Own the technical architecture and evolution of our FastAPI and RabbitMQ based backend services, making design decisions that balance speed of delivery with long-term maintainability across portfolio rebalancing, trade management, and advisor workflow systems
- Drive the design of APIs and data contracts consumed by both our internal Vue/Nuxt advisor portal and external integrations, ensuring they are reliable, well-documented, and built for scale
- Lead the integration strategy across our data layer — PostgreSQL databases, MongoDB/DocumentDB, real-time market data feeds, and custodial data services — identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and reliability gaps
- Architect and improve our AWS infrastructure (CDK, ECS Fargate, serverless components) with a focus on operational excellence, cost efficiency, and deployment confidence
- Establish and enforce engineering standards for testing, observability, incident response, and code quality, setting patterns that other engineers adopt
- Serve as the primary technical decision-maker on the team, evaluating build-vs-buy tradeoffs, technology choices, and system design proposals
- Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and architectural guidance — without taking on direct reports
- Collaborate directly with product, operations, and portfolio management stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into sound technical solutions
Required Skills & Experience
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2 years operating at a Staff or Tech Lead level
- Demonstrated experience building and scaling client-facing financial software or SaaS platforms serving professional/enterprise users
- Deep proficiency in Python, including async patterns, performance optimization, and large codebase stewardship
- Proven track record designing and operating production REST APIs at scale (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)
- Production experience with message and event driven systems (RabbitMQ, etc)
- Strong expertise with relational databases (PostgreSQL) and document stores (MongoDB), including schema design, query optimization, and migration strategy
- Extensive experience with AWS (ECS, Fargate, Lambda, S3, SQS/SNS) and Infrastructure-as-Code (AWS CDK, Terraform, or CloudFormation) in production environments
- Track record of improving engineering culture — testing practices, observability, incident management, or developer experience
- Strong technical communication skills: ability to write clear proposals, lead design reviews, and articulate tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical audiences
Preferred Skills & Experience
- Direct experience in asset management, wealth management, or trading systems — particularly portfolio construction, rebalancing, or order management
- Familiarity with market data providers (Polygon, Bloomberg, Reuters) and financial data workflows
- Experience with modern frontend frameworks (Vue.js, React) and a willingness to contribute across the stack when needed
- Background with Python data libraries (Pandas, NumPy) for financial data transformation and analysis
- Experience with Datadog or similar APM/observability platforms at an operational level (defining SLOs, building dashboards, tuning alerts)
- Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, and designing systems for eventual consistency
- Familiarity with regulatory or compliance considerations in financial software (SOC 2, data residency, audit trails)
Anticipated Posting End Date:
2026-04-21
Base Pay Range: $250,000.00/hr - $300,000.00/hr
Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, time in role, base salary of internal peers, prior performance, business sector, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, the competitive compensation package may include, depending on the role, participation in an incentive program linked to performance (for example, annual discretionary incentive programs, non-annual sales incentive plans, or other non-annual incentive plans).
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Company Overview
Nuveen is a global investment leader, managing public and private assets for clients around the world and on behalf of TIAA, our parent company and one of the world’s largest institutional investors. We invest in the growth of businesses, real estate, infrastructure and natural capital, providing clients with the reliability, access and foresight unique to our heritage. Our prevailing perspective on the future drives our ambition to innovate and adapt our business to the changing needs of investors - all to pursue lasting performance for our clients, our communities and our global economy. Visit www.nuveen.com to learn more about us.
Our Culture of Impact
At TIAA, we're on a mission to build on our 100+ year legacy of delivering for our clients while evolving to meet