Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Symetra is a financial services company dedicated to helping people achieve their financial goals. The Staff Software Engineer will provide hands-on technical leadership for designing, developing, and delivering a cloud-native platform while guiding architecture, engineering practices, risk management, and cross-team delivery. The role also includes writing production-quality software, reviewing code, mentoring engineers, and improving platform reliability and supportability.
Responsibilities
- Serve as a hands-on technical leader for the design, development, and delivery of a cloud-native platform
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Architecture teams to turn business requirements into scalable technical solutions
- Lead technical design discussions and guide architectural decisions across applications, APIs, integrations, data flows, security, reliability, and scalability
- Develop production-quality software while remaining actively involved in implementation and code reviews
- Establish and champion engineering best practices, including:
- Software design and architecture
- Code quality and review standards
- Automated testing
- CI/CD and deployment automation
- Observability and monitoring
- Reliability and production readiness
- Drive technical decision-making by evaluating tradeoffs and recommending practical, long-term solutions
- Identify and mitigate technical, architectural, integration, and delivery risks early
- Collaborate across multiple engineering teams to ensure consistency while supporting team autonomy
- Create and maintain technical documentation, including design documents, architecture decision records, and implementation plans
- Partner with engineering leadership to improve planning, dependency management, and delivery predictability
- Mentor and coach engineers, helping grow technical capabilities across the organization
- Support production operations and continuously improve platform performance, reliability, and supportability
Skills
- A senior technical leader with deep software engineering expertise and a strong systems-thinking mindset
- Experienced designing and building modern cloud-native applications and platforms
- Equally comfortable discussing architecture, writing code, reviewing designs, and mentoring engineers
- Skilled at translating ambiguous business problems into clear, executable technical solutions
- Strong understanding of application architecture, APIs, integrations, data flows, scalability, security, and reliability
- Experienced influencing technical direction across teams without relying on direct authority
- Comfortable evaluating tradeoffs and making pragmatic decisions that balance speed, quality, and maintainability
- Proven ability to identify risks early and drive resolution across complex technical environments
- Strong collaborator who can communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Passionate about engineering excellence, continuous improvement, and building sustainable solutions
- Experienced working with distributed teams, including contractors and vendor partners
- Dedicated to mentoring others and elevating the technical capabilities of the broader engineering organization
- Employer work visa sponsorship and support are not provided for this role
- Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States at hire and must maintain authorization to work in the United States throughout their employment with our company
Benefits
- Flexible full-time or hybrid telecommuting arrangements
- 401(k) plan with immediate vesting and company matching up to 6%
- Paid time away including vacation and sick time, flex days and ten paid holidays
- Company matching to double employees' impact when giving back to the community
- Eligibility for annual bonus program
Company Overview