Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Fifth Third Bank is a financial institution seeking a Lead Innovation Software Engineer to partner across various teams to define and demonstrate the future of its products and services. This hands-on role involves evaluating and applying emerging technologies to accelerate product innovation and improve delivery, while also providing technical leadership and mentorship.
Responsibilities
- Develop a strong understanding of Fifth Third Bank’s current and future-state technology and product architecture
- Help shape the bank’s evolution as a product-led enterprise built on a modern technology foundation
- Identify and prioritize opportunities to expand enterprise technology capabilities in support of customer and product innovation
- Partner with engineers, architects, and line-of-business leaders to envision, demonstrate, and develop new or improved financial products, business processes, and technology-enabled capabilities
- Lead end-to-end data workflows including extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) from structured and unstructured sources; perform quantitative and qualitative analysis; and develop interactive dashboards and visualizations (e.g., Power BI) to support decision-making, stakeholder reporting, and product insights
- Identify, evaluate, and benchmark fintechs and emerging startups by analyzing their technology architecture, product capabilities, business models, and financial viability; synthesize findings into comparative assessments and strategic recommendations aligned to enterprise priorities and market relevance
- Influence enterprise thinking on the future of technology across innovation, software development, fintech, artificial intelligence, and digital assets
- Lead or contribute to research and evaluation of emerging design, technology, industry, and market trends
- Translate customer needs, competitor activity, industry shifts, and technology developments into actionable insights
- Provide technical leadership, guidance, and mentorship to team members and partners
- Recognize meaningful patterns across industry, technology, and cultural change and explain their business impact
- Use systems thinking to connect ideas across products, platforms, teams, and enterprise capabilities
- Design solutions with the broader business and technology ecosystem in mind
- Apply structured problem solving and root cause analysis to address challenges and uncover new opportunities
- Recommend technology options and design approaches to senior leaders and key stakeholders
- Create compelling narratives, demonstrations, prototypes, and communications that bring concepts to life
- Share lessons learned, best practices, and new ideas across the team and broader organization
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in a STEM field or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
- 5+ years of experience in roles closely aligned to the responsibilities of this position
- Strong front-end development experience delivering commercial solutions using modern web standards and frameworks such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, React, Vue, or similar tools
- Strong back-end development experience working with APIs, services, event-driven architectures using Kafka, databases, SQL, and modern data platforms such as Snowflake, with a clear understanding of how front-end frameworks integrate with back-end systems
- Deep experience with at least one server-side language such as Python, Java, Node.js, or PHP
- Infrastructure experience building, configuring, and supporting scalable web applications in cloud or hosted environments such as AWS or Azure
- Experience with modern server-side tooling, deployment practices, and hosting models
- Experience working in a mature DevOps environment using version control, CI/CD, and automated testing practices
- Proficiency with generative AI for productivity and full-lifecycle software development
- Strong working knowledge of SQL and modern data platforms (e.g., Snowflake), along with experience building and consuming data pipelines across both real-time/event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, APIs) and batch/integration patterns for one-off or analytical use cases
- Familiarity with end-to-end data lifecycle—from ingestion through transformation to visualization—including use of analytics and reporting tools (e.g., Power BI) and/or integrated data platforms (e.g., Dataiku) to support business insights and decision-making
- Strong understanding of agile product development and iterative delivery
- Working knowledge of blockchain, digital assets, smart contracts, and web3 technologies
- Ability to make sound design decisions and clearly explain the rationale behind them
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to build trust with team members, business partners, and customers and use those relationships to identify new opportunities
- Commitment to mentoring others and sharing knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned
- Ability to identify meaningful opportunities for change and translate them into effective design or technology responses
- Comfort working iteratively, making informed decisions with incomplete information, and adapting based on feedback
- Strong attention to detail
Company Overview