Sr Staff Software Engineer - (Platform Engineering /Distributed Systems) *HYBRID*

Government Employees Insurance Company; Renton (WA); On-site; USD 115,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

GEICO seeks a Sr Staff Software Engineer to shape the technical roadmap for Digital Personal Auto Sales, delivering scalable services across on-prem and cloud environments. You will mentor engineers, drive architecture decisions, and enforce best practices for reliable, observable systems.

You will collaborate with executives and engineers to accelerate modernization while ensuring security and performance in high-availability platforms across GEICO’s portfolio.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience.
• 8+ years of professional software development experience.
• Experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or other cloud service providers.

Responsibilities

• Develop and drive the overall technical roadmap for the Digital Personal Auto Sales, aligning it with business goals.
• Lead design and architecture of resilient, scalable platform services (on-premises and cloud).
• Champion software development best practices and safe deployment processes for continuous delivery.
• Mentor engineers and collaborate with leadership to accelerate platform modernization.
• Ensure observability, security, and reliability across distributed systems.

Skills

Go

Java

High-scale systems

Security best practices

SQL/NoSQL

Networking/CDN/Load balancing

DevOps practices

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Incident management

Open-source tools

Architecture & design

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Open-source tools

Job description

Why Join GEICO?

At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities. Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive on relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact on local communities nationwide. Founded in 1936, GEICO is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies and one of the largest auto insurers in the United States.

Position Summary

GEICO is seeking an experienced software engineer with a passion for building high-performance, low maintenance, zero-downtime platforms, and applications. You will help drive our insurance business transformation and platform engineering domain modernization as we redefine experience for our customers.

Position Description

Our Sr Staff Software Engineer works with our Manager, Distinguished and Sr. Engineers to innovate and build new systems, improve, and enhance existing systems and identify new opportunities to apply your knowledge to solve critical problems. You will lead the strategy and execution of a technical roadmap that will increase the velocity of delivering products and unlock new engineering capabilities. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of technology, risk management, engineering best practices and strategic planning to design and implement highly scalable, available, and reliable systems with effective observability.

Position Responsibilities

As a Sr Staff Software Engineer, you will:

• Develop and drive the overall technical roadmap for the Digital Personal Auto Sales, aligning it with the organization's business goals and objectives.
• Work closely with executive leadership, tech teams, and other cross-discipline stakeholders to build optimal strategy for delivering platform services.
• Leverage technical and domain expertise to influence partners and leadership to create a force multiplier in achieving milestones in the team’s technical roadmap.
• Provide thought leadership in GIA Platform, staying ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies to create effective strategy that minimizes business disruption while balancing the modernization of legacy platform components.
• Lead the design and architecture of resilient and scalable platform services, considering both on-premises and cloud-based solutions.
• Champion software development best practices and safe deployment processes to enable continuous, incremental delivery of business values.
• Contribute directly to and leading by example in day-to-day engineering activities (writing feature code and automated tests, raising PRs and reviewing peers’ PRs, developing and managing CI/CD pipelines, production support, among others).
• Develop and maintain comprehensive incident response plans to address various disaster scenarios across multiple partner integration points.
• Spearhead collaboration with various stakeholders in production readiness assessment and operational excellence.
• Hands-on software engineering and SDLC best practices (Technical Review Documents, Architecture, Software Development, Code Reviews, Testing, Production Readiness Reviews, among others).
• Evaluate, select, and implement modern technologies and tools to enhance our integration with various partners including but not limited to processes, compliance, and visibility.
• Stay current with industry best practices and emerging technologies to continuously improve our partner integration platform capabilities.
• Act as a trusted advisor to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Be a role model and mentor, helping to coach and strengthen the technical expertise and know-how of our engineering and product community.
• Analyze cost and forecast, incorporating them into business plans.
• Determine and support resource requirements, evaluate operational processes, measure outcomes to ensure desired results, and demonstrate adaptability and sponsoring continuous learning.

Qualifications

• Fluency in at least one modern language (Go is preferred, Java is a plus)
• Proven track record of designing, implementing, and maintaining highly scalable, available and reliable system in production
• Understanding of security best practices and data encryption technology
• Understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, including stateful services management and storage
• Understanding of networking, caches, key/value stores, load balancing, global load balancing, queues, DNS and CDN
• Deep knowledge of DevOps practices, methodologies, and principles, along with a solid understanding of on prem and public cloud-based network, compute, and storage technologies
• In-depth knowledge of hybrid cloud architecture, IaaS and PaaS technologies, container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes), cloud efficiency and observability etc.
• Strong background in incident management
• Ability to create incident response playbooks, runbooks, incident triaging strategies, and post-incident analysis to drive continuous improvement in system reliability and availability
• Experience with open-source management and monitoring tools
• Experience with infrastructure automation, tooling, and configuration management frameworks
• Hands on experience with Kubernetes container management system
• Familiarity with cloud security best practices and compliance standards
• Excellent leadership skills with a passion for mentoring and fostering professional growth
• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a keen eye for detail and a passion for driving operational excellence
• Visionary thinker with the ability to anticipate future challenges and opportunities
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities
• Proven track record of successfully leading and building software in large and complex organizations
• Experience 8+ years of professional experience in software development
• Experience 6+ years of experience with architecture and design
• Experience 6+ years of experience in open-source frameworks
• 4+ years of experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or other cloud service providers

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience

Annual Salary

#LI-FA1 Annual Salary $115,000.00 - $260,000.00 The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/ annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate’s work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.

GEICO will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The GEICO Pledge

Great Company: Protecting customers through life’s twists and turns with innovation and integrity. Great Careers: Personalized development programs, mentorship, and certification assistance. Great Culture: Inclusive and collaborative culture rooted in shared success. Great Rewards: Competitive pay, benefits, and flexibility to support your well-being and future.

The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. GEICO hires and promotes individuals solely on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled. GEICO reasonably accommodates qualified individuals with disabilities to enable them to receive equal employment opportunity and/or perform the essential functions of the job, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship to the Company. This applies to all applicants and associates. GEICO also provides a work environment in which each associate is able to be productive and work to the best of their ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment. We expect and require the cooperation of all associates in maintaining an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment with mutual respect by and for all associates and applicants.

At GEICO,we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities. Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive on relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact on local communities nationwide. Founded in 1936, GEICO is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies and one of the largest auto insurers in the United States.

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