Senior Lead Software Engineer- Payments Tech - AI-First Developer Portal & External APIs

JPMorganChase; Jersey City (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Jersey City seeks a Senior Lead Software Engineer to own the technical direction of an AI-native Developer Portal, focusing on agent-ready workflows, secure external APIs, and a seamless developer experience.

You will balance hands-on engineering (~50%), architecture reviews, and coaching engineers while partnering with API owners, security, and shared services to deliver a unified client experience.

Qualifications

• Ten+ years software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Three+ years leading software engineering teams delivering complex platforms with measurable outcomes.
• Strong backend development experience in Java or modern stacks.
• Proven expertise building external-facing APIs with contract-first design, versioning, security and operability.
• Strong security fundamentals for external integrations: OAuth2/OIDC, mTLS, PKI, secrets management, secure SDLC.
• Experience delivering AI-enabled product capabilities in production: retrieval, tool execution, guardrails, monitoring.
• Proficiency in automation and continuous delivery; strong SDLC practices.
• Experience in regulated environments with strong controls and reliability expectations.

Responsibilities

• Lead the creation of an AI-first Developer Portal experience, defining architecture patterns for agent-ready workflows and contexts.
• Build and operate AI-enabled support experiences with contextual understanding of client/workspace state.
• Design and deliver secure external API platform capabilities including OpenAPI design, versioning, and developer usability.
• Own authentication and credential workflows for external integrations, including certificate handling and secure onboarding.
• Establish engineering standards for AI + automation, including evaluation strategy, telemetry, and incident response.
• Remain hands-on ~50% through critical-path coding, reviews, and performance improvements.
• Drive cross-functional delivery with API owners, security, and shared services to unify client experience.

Skills

Java backend

Distributed systems

Team leadership

Security fundamentals

APIs and integration

SDLC / Agile

Observability

Regulated environments

AI-enabled product capabilities

Tools

OpenAPI

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

Job Description

This is your chance to shape an

Job Description

This is your chance to shape an AI-first Developer Portal - a modern "front door" where clients and their systems can discover capabilities, onboard, troubleshoot, and integrate through agent-ready workflows and high-quality external APIs.

As a Senior Lead Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase within Payments Technology, you will lead teams and remain hands-on in building secure, stable, scalable platform capabilities that modernize the developer experience for the agentic era.

Role Summary

You will own the technical direction and execution for an AI-native portal experience where:

• Core portal capabilities are designed to be consumed by agents and automation (with excellent human UX as a companion).
• Workflows are exposed as reusable actions/tools with strong security, auditability, and operational controls.
• External API experiences are productized to be easy to discover, evaluate, and integrate—at scale.

Job Responsibilities

• Lead the creation of an AI-first Developer Portal experience: define architecture patterns for agent-ready workflows, tool/action schemas, context assembly, and safe execution.
• Build and operate AI-enabled support experiences (assistant + workflow automation) with contextual understanding of client/workspace state, integration progress, and troubleshooting signals.
• Design and deliver secure external API platform capabilities: contract-first API design (OpenAPI), versioning strategy, backward compatibility, idempotency, pagination, consistent error models, and developer usability.
• Own authentication and credential workflows for external integrations, including patterns for certificate handling, credential rotation, and secure onboarding journeys.
• Establish engineering standards for AI + automation in production: evaluation and test strategy, release gating, telemetry, audit logging, and incident response for AI/tooling systems.
• Remain hands-on (~50%) through critical-path coding, architecture reviews, code reviews, debugging, and performance/resiliency improvements.
• Drive cross-functional, federated delivery by partnering with API owners, security, and shared services to deliver a unified client experience despite distributed backend ownership.
• Coach and develop engineers: set expectations for quality, delivery discipline, design rigor, and collaboration; actively grow technical talent and leadership bench.

Required Qualifications, Capabilities, And Skills

• Formal training or certification in software engineering concepts and 5+ years applied experience; demonstrated coaching/mentoring experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience building and operating distributed systems at scale.
• 3+ years of experience leading software engineering teams and delivering complex platforms/products with measurable outcomes.
• Strong hands-on backend development experience in Java (other modern backend stacks acceptable).
• Proven expertise building external-facing APIs and integration platforms, including contract-first design, lifecycle/version management, security controls, and operational readiness.
• Strong security fundamentals for external integrations: OAuth2/OIDC concepts, mTLS, PKI/certificates, secrets management, secure SDLC, and threat modeling.
• Experience building AI-enabled product capabilities in production (beyond simple chat): grounded retrieval/search, structured tool/action execution, guardrails, evaluation practices, monitoring, and auditability.
• Proficient in automation and continuous delivery methods; advanced understanding of agile and modern SDLC practices.
• Strong understanding of application resiliency and observability (logs/metrics/traces), performance engineering, and incident management.
• Experience working in regulated environments with strong controls, compliance requirements, and reliability expectations.

Preferred Qualifications, Capabilities, And Skills

• Developer portal or developer-experience platform experience (onboarding journeys, documentation-as-a-product, integration tooling, sandbox/test experiences).
• Experience building workflow/orchestration systems (state machines, async processing, retries, compensating actions).
• Search and relevance experience (enterprise search, ranking, contextual retrieval, content quality signals).
• Cloud-native delivery experience (containers/Kubernetes) and event-driven architectures (webhooks/callbacks/streams).
• Prior payments, treasury, or broader financial-services platform experience.

ABOUT US

JPMorganChase, one of the oldest financial institutions, offers innovative financial solutions to millions of consumers, small businesses and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Our history spans over 200 years and today we are a leader in investment banking, consumer and small business banking, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management.

We offer a competitive total rewards package including base salary determined based on the role, experience, skill set and location. Those in eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation, paid in the form of cash and/or forfeitable equity, awarded in recognition of individual achievements and contributions. We also offer a range of benefits and programs to meet employee needs, based on eligibility. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage, on-site health and wellness centers, a retirement savings plan, backup childcare, tuition reimbursement, mental health support, financial coaching and more. Additional details about total compensation and benefits will be provided during the hiring process.

We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs. Visit our FAQs for more information about requesting an accommodation.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Veterans

About The Team

J.P. Morgan's Commercial & Investment Bank is a global leader across banking, markets, securities services and payments. Corporations, governments and institutions throughout the world entrust us with their business in more than 100 countries. The Commercial & Investment Bank provides strategic advice, raises capital, manages risk and extends liquidity in markets around the world.