Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Fifth Third Bank is a financial services organization focused on connecting people with banking opportunities and advancing its technology capabilities. The Lead Innovation Software Engineer partners with technology, product, strategy, and business teams to evaluate emerging technologies, develop prototypes and demonstrations, and shape modern enterprise architecture. The role combines hands-on software engineering, data analysis, fintech research, artificial intelligence, and technical leadership to turn ideas into practical innovations.
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
- Position not available for immigration sponsorship
Benefits
- This role is eligible to participate in an incentive compensation plan, with any such payment based upon company, line of business and/or individual performance.
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