Lead Application Development Engineer – Payment Technology

American Family Insurance; Madison (WI); Hybrid; USD 131,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

401(k) plan

Pension plan

Annual incentive

Holidays & PTO

Student loan repayment

Paid family leave

Job summary

American Family Insurance’s Payment Technology team seeks a Lead Application Development Engineer to drive secure, scalable payment solutions enterprise-wide. You will guide architecture, mentor engineers, and move legacy systems toward cloud-native, event-driven designs while collaborating with product, architecture, and business teams.

You will lead coding efforts, shape designs, and ensure production readiness, security, and high reliability, with hybrid work options and relocation support

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience.
• Approximately 10+ years in software engineering, application development, or enterprise solution delivery, including 7+ years with Java, Spring Boot, or comparable backend technologies.
• 5+ years building and deploying cloud-native applications, ideally on AWS, using microservices, REST APIs, event-driven architecture, and distributed systems.
• Experience modernizing legacy or high-volume transactional applications; payment-platform or financial-services experience is helpful but not required.
• Experience with AWS services, containers, CI/CD, IaC, automated testing, observability, security, and resilient production operations.
• Ability to turn business needs into scalable technical designs and use AI-assisted tools or cloud AI services to improve engineering quality and efficiency.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring, architecture and code reviews, stakeholder influence, and delivery of customer-focused outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for secure, scalable payment applications—from early concepts and architecture through implementation and production.
• Shape the future of our payment platform by modernizing legacy solutions with cloud-native, microservices, API, event-driven, and distributed-system patterns.
• Turn complex needs into practical solutions by partnering with product, architecture, engineering, and business teams to define designs and delivery plans.
• Stay close to the code, leading development for complex or high-risk capabilities and solving challenges across integrations and dependencies.
• Set the standard for engineering excellence across design, testing, security, observability, performance, documentation, and production readiness.
• Grow the team’s technical capabilities by mentoring engineers, guiding key decisions, and linking work to meaningful customer outcomes.

Skills

Customer-driven solutions

Complex software/systems

Technical leadership

Mentoring engineers

Java

Spring Boot

AWS

Cloud-native architectures

API design

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Observability tools

Job description

Join American Family Insurance’s Payment Technology team as a Lead Application Development Engineer [TB2.1]and help modernize the secure, scalable applications that power payment experiences across the enterprise. Reporting to the Senior Manager, you will combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership to move legacy solutions to cloud-native architectures and improve customer and business outcomes. You will partner with product, engineering, architecture, and business teams to design and deliver resilient payment capabilities for American Family Insurance. In this role, you will guide technical decisions, mentor engineers, and apply cloud and AI-enabled practices to strengthen quality, speed, and reliability.

Position Compensation Range: $131,000.00 - $220,000.00 Pay Rate Type: Salary Compensation may vary based on the job level and your geographic work location. Relocation support is offered for eligible candidates. This role does not have approval for sponsorship now or in the futire. This includes H1 transfers, OPT, CPT, F1 Visa and STEM.

Primary Accountabilities - What You’ll Lead

• Own the technical direction for secure, scalable payment applications—from early concepts and architecture through implementation and production.
• Shape the future of our payment platform by modernizing legacy solutions with cloud-native, microservices, API, event-driven, and distributed-system patterns.
• Turn coplex needs into practical solutions by partnering with product, architecture, engineering, and business teams to define designs and delivery plans.
• Stay close to the code, leading development for complex or high-risk capabilities and solving challenges across integrations and dependencies.
• Set the standard for engineering excellence across design, testing, security, observability, performance, documentation, and production readiness.
• Grow the team’s technical capabilities by mentoring engineers, guiding key decisions, and connecting the work to meaningful customer and business outcomes.

Specialized Knowledge & Skills Requirements

• Demonstrated experience providing customer-driven solutions, support or service
• Demonstrated experience analyzing and understanding complex software/systems.
• Demonstrated experience communicating technical information.
• Demonstrated experience developing different solution-delivery and design approaches and solutions to customers.
• Demonstrated experience developing complex software/systems using one or more programming language.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing and estimating project size and work efforts for software solutions.
• Demonstrated experience providing technical guidance and leadership to less experienced staff.
• Extensive knowledge and understanding of software development and design standards and methodologies.
• Extensive knowledge and understanding of infrastructure technologies, operating systems, and the interconnectivity between infrastructure platforms and software tools.
• Extensive knowledge and understanding of systems development life cycle (SDLC).
• Solid knowledge and understanding of application architecture and design alternatives.
• Solid Knowledge and understanding of integration and migration strategies and technologies.

Preferred Qualifications

• We value skills gained through many paths. If you meet most of these qualifications and are excited about payment technology, we encourage you to apply.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience.
• Approximately 10+ years in software engineering, application development, or enterprise solution delivery, including 7+ years with Java, Spring Boot, or comparable backend technologies.
• 5+ years building and deploying cloud-native applications, ideally on AWS, using microservices, REST APIs, event-driven architecture, and distributed systems.
• Experience modernizing legacy or high-volume transactional applications; payment-platform, financial-services, or similarly regulated-industry experience is helpful but not required.
• Experience with relevant AWS services, containers, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, observability, security, and resilient production operations.
• Ability to turn business needs into scalable technical designs and use approved AI-assisted tools or cloud AI services to improve engineering quality and efficiency.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring, architecture and code reviews, stakeholder influence, and delivery of customer-focused business outcomes.

In this HYBRID role, you will work 10 days per month from one of the following office locations: Madison, WI 53783; Boston, MA 02110. Internal candidates are encouraged to apply regardless of location and will be considered based on the needs of the role.

Licenses Not Applicable.

Travel Requirements Up to 10% travel required.

Physical Requirements Work primarily involves sitting and standing for extended periods.

Working Conditions Not Applicable.

Additional Information

To ensure a strong start, all employees participate in our New Employee Orientation during their first week.This experience is held in person at our Madison, WI Headquarters or one of our AmFam core locations to help you connect with our mission, meet key team members and build relationships that support your growth.At times, sessions may be delivered virtually based on scheduling and availability.

Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of applicable background checks. Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets, and inventions. Sponsorship will not be considered for this position unless specified in the posting.

• We provide benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
• You will have access to comprehensive medical, dental, vision and wellbeing benefits that enable you to take care of your health.
• We also offer a competitive 401(k) contribution, a pension plan, a annual incentive, 9 paid holidays and a paid time off program (23 days accrued annually for full-time employees).
• In addition, our student loan repayment program and paid-family leave are available to support our employees and their families.
• Interns and contingent workers are not eligible for American Family Insurance Group benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer. It is our policy to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws pertaining to non-discrimination, non-harassment and equal opportunity. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. American Family Insurance is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please email [e-mail] to request a reasonable accommodation.

American Family Insurance, based in Madison, Wis., has been serving customers since 1927. We inspire, protect and restore dreams through our insurance products, exceptional service from our agency owners and employees, community investments and creative partnerships. American Family Insurance is the nation’s 12th-largest property/casualty insurance company, ranking No. 202 on the Fortune 500 list. American Family has a current ‘a+’ credit rating through AM Best, and has distinction as a “Standing the Test of Time” company, which is represented by having an AM Best financial strength rating of ‘A’ or better for at least 75 years. The company offers American Family-brand products through a network of exclusive agency owners as well as nationwide through key strategic partnerships. American Family Insurance also includes Homesite and Main Street America Insurance. The company has approximately 10,500 employees nationwide.

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