This is a Senior Software Engineering position at the Vice President level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs.
About the Role
We're hiring a senior hands on engineer for the Morgan Stanley Equity Swaps technology team — the platform behind a market-leading, global front-office business. You'll be working hands-on inside a large-scale, real-time, event-driven system that processes significant volume every day, alongside a team actively modernizing the platform rather than just maintaining it.
This isn't a role where seniority means stepping away from code. You'll be designing, architecting, and building core components yourself, while also shaping technical direction and mentoring less experienced engineers on the team. Expect real ownership: you'll be trusted to make architectural calls, not just implement someone else's spec.
What you'll do in the role:
Building and evolving a multi-threaded, Linux-based, real-time Java platform handling high-throughput event flows
Driving analysis, design, and architecture for complex, cross-team initiatives
Working with an interesting tech stack: RDBMS alongside technologies like MongoDB, Kafka, IBM MQ, Hazelcast, and Snowflake
Getting deeply hands-on with our large sharded MongoDB cluster, with the expectation of growing into one of the team's go-to subject matter expert on its design, performance, and operational behaviour
Becoming a technical expert on our core cashflow calculator — not just the code, but the underlying numbers, so you can reason confidently about whether outputs are actually correct, not just whether the system ran without error
Strengthening our test automation and deployment practices — we're steadily maturing toward greater CI/CD and are looking for engineers who want to help drive that evolution, rather than someone joining a fully-automated pipeline
Participating in L3 support for North America on a fair rotation — as a senior engineer, you'll be relied on to lead the hard incidents and ambiguous problems
Actively using AI tooling (Claude, Amp, Deep Search, and others) to accelerate the SDLC — we want engineers who are evolving their own workflow with AI while keeping strong technical judgment and oversight over what ships
What you'll bring to the role:
10+ years of experience
Java, server-side, concurrent/multi-threaded programming, with Spring Boot (Core Spring) and JUnit
Solid understanding of message-based architectures (Kafka and/or IBM MQ)
Strong RDBMS skills — Sybase and/or DB2 preferred — with proficiency writing complex SQL
Unix/Linux scripting (Shell / Python)
Sharp problem-solving and analytical ability, with a track record of owning full SDLC delivery
Excellent written and verbal communication — you'll be expected to explain complex tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders
Genuine interest in learning the business the platform supports, not just the tech
Desired Skills
Experience operating or tuning large-scale sharded MongoDB clusters
Comfort with financial calculations and a willingness to get into the weeds of numerical correctness, not just code correctness
Knowledge of the Equity Derivatives business
Experience integrating AI-assisted development tools into a real engineering workflow
Who thrives here:
Strong technical instincts and happy owning ambiguous, complex problems end-to-end
Someone who wants technical leadership without giving up hands-on coding
A collaborator who can push back constructively with demanding stakeholders and hold a clear technical position
Genuine curiosity about the Equity Derivatives business itself, not just the codebase
A "can-do," solutions-first attitude when architectural tradeoffs get contentious
Expected base pay rates for the role will be between $155,000 and $215,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.