Lead Software Engineer : Vice President

Morgan Stanley; United States; On-site; USD 250,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Morgan Stanley’s Fort Tech team seeks a Vice President of Java & Cloud Engineering to lead enterprise platforms across Operations Technology. You will shape architecture, drive cloud adoption, and set engineering standards for scalable, secure systems across global platforms.

You will mentor leaders, partner with Product, QA, DevOps and Business stakeholders, and own end-to-end delivery of strategic programs while elevating performance metrics and operational resilience.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience leading large engineering organizations
• Proven track record delivering multi-team enterprise platforms
• Strong background in distributed architectures and system design

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the strategic technology roadmap aligned with business objectives.
• Lead architecture and design decisions for distributed, event-driven, cloud-native platforms.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural principles, and development best practices.
• Drive modernization initiatives, platform transformations, and cloud adoption strategies.
• Champion non-functional requirements including scalability, resiliency, performance, observability, and security.

Skills

Java & Spring

Distributed systems

Microservices

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Azure / AWS

Leadership

Architecture roadmaps

Tools

Kafka

MQ

Event Hubs

APIs & Integration

Job description

We’re seeking someone to join our FORT Tech team as a Vice President -Java & Cloud Engineering, in Operations Technology.

Operations Technology develops and maintains systems in support of Morgan Stanley’s global Operations , including (but not limited to) Settlements, Confirmations, Regulatory Reporting, Position Keeping, Corporate Actions processing and other post-trade functions. Operations Technology is a global organization that is client-focused and functionally aligned. Our organization is built to support our clients functional, regional and business-facing requirements while delivering innovative technology and ensuring plant and processing stability. The Firm operates at scale with up to 40 million trades processed on peak volume days and hundreds of billions of dollars of daily settlements with activity ongoing in multiple countries and currencies across the globe. There is a great breadth of financial products that our Operations plant handles across equity and fixed income, from cash products to complex derivatives and loans.

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities.

This is Vice President position that develops and maintains software solutions that support business needs.

Since 1935, Morgan Stanley is known as a global leader in financial services, always evolving and innovating to better serve our clients and our communities in more than 40 countries around the world.

What you’ll do in the role:

Technology Leadership

• Define and drive the strategic technology roadmap aligned with business objectives.
• Lead architecture and design decisions for distributed, event-driven, cloud-native platforms.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural principles, and development best practices.
• Drive modernization initiatives, platform transformations, and cloud adoption strategies.
• Champion non-functional requirements including scalability, resiliency, performance, observability, and security.
• Ensure architecture decisions support future business growth and operational efficiency.

Delivery & Execution Leadership

• Lead multiple Agile squads and engineering teams across geographies.
• Own end-to-end delivery of strategic programs, ensuring quality, predictability, and timely execution.
• Drive planning, prioritization, dependency management, and execution across multiple workstreams.
• Manage risks, impediments, and delivery challenges while maintaining alignment with business priorities.
• Partner with Product, Operations, QA, DevOps, Architecture, and Business stakeholders to deliver functional objectives.
• Establish and monitor engineering metrics, operational KPIs, and service health indicators.

People Leadership

• Build, mentor, and develop high-performing engineering teams.
• Provide career guidance, coaching, and technical mentorship to Directors, Managers, and Senior Engineers.
• Lead performance management, succession planning, talent reviews, and workforce planning.
• Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, diversity, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Attract, retain, and grow top engineering talent.
• Develop future technology leaders within the organization.

Stakeholder & Organizational Leadership

• Serve as a trusted technology partner to senior business and technology leaders.
• Influence investment decisions and technology strategy through data-driven recommendations.
• Communicate technology vision, execution status, risks, and opportunities to executive stakeholders.
• Drive cross-organizational collaboration and alignment across multiple teams and functions.
• Balance short-term delivery commitments with long-term strategic goals.

Risk, Controls & Governance

• Ensure compliance with enterprise technology standards, security policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Drive operational excellence, production stability, and resiliency improvements.
• Establish governance processes for architecture reviews, engineering quality, and SDLC controls.
• Lead incident management reviews and continuous improvement initiatives.

What you’ll bring to the role:

Leadership & Management

At least 8 years’ relevant experience would generally be expected to find the skills required for this role.

• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading large engineering organizations.
• Proven track record managing multiple engineering teams or Agile squads delivering complex enterprise platforms.
• Demonstrated success in driving large-scale transformation and modernization initiatives.
• Strong people leadership experience including coaching, career development, succession planning, and organizational growth.
• Experience managing geographically distributed teams and stakeholders.

Core Technology

• Deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and the Spring ecosystem.
• Extensive experience designing and implementing microservices architectures.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, domain-driven design, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience building high-volume, low-latency, mission-critical systems.
• Strong knowledge of software engineering best practices, design patterns, and architectural principles.

Cloud Platforms & Engineering

• Strong expertise in Azure (preferred) or AWS cloud platforms.
• Experience designing and operating cloud-native applications at enterprise scale.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes, containerization, orchestration, and platform engineering.
• Experience building highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable cloud solutions.
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and cloud automation frameworks.

Middleware & Event Streaming

• Expertise in event-driven systems and messaging platforms such as Kafka, MQ, Event Hubs, or equivalent technologies.
• Strong experience integrating distributed services through APIs and asynchronous communication patterns.
• Experience designing resilient, high-throughput integration architectures.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY:

At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what’s best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There’s also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.

To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices into your browser.

Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background. Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents.

Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences.

For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.