Software Engineer - Backend

Morgan Stanley; New York (NY); On-site; USD 160,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Morgan Stanley is seeking a Director-level Backend Engineer to design and operate production-grade services in the Technology division. You will own backend systems from design to deployment, focusing on scalable APIs, distributed architectures, and robust performance under load.

The role emphasizes thoughtful trade-offs across latency, resilience, and complexity, with hands-on leadership of engineers working on APIs, data, and platform concerns at scale.

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals (Java/Python) and production-grade services experience.
• Ability to design clean abstractions and scalable APIs.
• Experience with distributed systems, latency, reliability constraints, and fault tolerance.

Responsibilities

• Designing and building new backend services and APIs from scratch.
• Working on distributed systems with scalability and reliability constraints.
• Making trade-offs across performance, consistency, and complexity.
• Writing maintainable, testable code and owning services end-to-end.
• Debugging production issues and improving system resilience.

Skills

Java

Python

HTTP fundamentals

Object-oriented design

Data structures

Multi-threaded systems

Event-driven systems

Memory & performance

Tools

Dependency Injection

Lifecycle management

AOP concepts

Transaction management

Job description

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 a Software Engineering position at the Director level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs.

Morgan Stanley is an industry leader in financial services, known for mobilizing capital to help governments, corporations, institutions, and individuals around the world achieve their financial goals.

Interested in joining a team that’s eager to create, innovate and make an impact on the world? Read on.

Build real systems. Own real problems. Ship at scale.

We are looking for a strong backend engineer with around 4+ years of hands-on experience building and operating production‑grade services.

This role is for engineers who enjoy thinking through ambiguity, designing clean abstractions, and understanding how systems behave under load, failure, and change.

If you like solving real engineering problems, not toy puzzles, and want to work close to distributed systems, APIs, data, and platform concerns, this role is for you.

What You’ll Do In The Role

• Designing and building new backend services and APIs from scratch
• Working on distributed systems with real scalability, latency, and reliability constraints
• Making thoughtful trade-offs across performance, consistency, and complexity
• Writing clean, maintainable, and testable code that others enjoy working with
• Owning services end-to-end: design - build - deploy - operate
• Debugging production issues and improving system resilience over time

Core Engineering Skills

• Strong proficiency in Java and Python as primary languages for backend engineering
• Solid understanding of HTTP fundamentals
• Strong grasp of object-oriented design, clean class modeling, and design patterns with multi-threaded and event-driven systems
• Awareness of me
• Good command of data structures and collections, and when to use them
• Hands-on experience with multi-thread and event-driven systems.
• Awareness of memory usage, time and space complexity

Framework & Platform Knowledge

• Experience with dependency injection and lifecycle management
• Understanding of AOP concepts (advice, pointcuts, cross-cutting concerns)
• Experience with transaction management
• Familiarity with connection pools and resource management

System Design & Distributed Systems Exposure

• Experience designing read and write APIs focused on stability, scalability, and performance
• Exposure to real-world event-driven systems, pub-sub patterns, and fault tolerance