Software Engineer II

At Northwestern Mutual, the Planning Solutions team is on a mission to transform how Financial Advisors connect with clients through innovative technology. As part of the Planning Experience team, you'll be at the heart of these efforts, building a critical application that advisor's use to build personalized financial plans to provide better outcomes for our clients.
Planning Experience (PX) is Northwestern Mutual's proprietary financial planning software. This team is responsible for the software platform which is used by our financial representatives to create wholistic financial plans for our clients. Advisors use the platform to engage with their clients by running financial simulations that emphasize the value of products that NM offers and helps deliver financial security to our clients. More specifically, you will join the team which implements features and business capabilities to support our users in our web-based application.
We thrive in a fast-paced, agile environment that values bold thinking, experimentation, and constant learning. Our teams embrace a culture of full ownership-taking charge of everything from architecture and testing to deployment and optimization.
The Technologies We Use Include:

• Back End: Java & Kotlin (Spring Boot) Node, Apollo GraphQL.
• Front End: JavaScript, Typescript, React.
• Data Store: Mongo, Postgres, AWS S3, Redis.
• Message Broker: RabbitMQ
• Infrastructure: Hosted on AWS with Kubernetes orchestrating our scalable infrastructure.

You're Excited About This Opportunity Because You Will...

• Deliver high-quality features and enhancements to the Planning Experience application.
• Collaborate with teammates to design, build, and maintain scalable systems.
• Work in a highly collaborative environment with engineering, product, design teams and other stakeholders, sharing your ideas to help shape the future of the product and platform.
• Take initiative to solve technical and business-oriented problems.
• Assess and provide solutions to system-wide architectural problems.
• Deliver high quality software through the entire SDLC.
• Actively participate in code reviews to improve code quality and share knowledge.
• Work with modern technologies like React, JavaScript/TypeScript, Kotlin, Java, and AWS.
• Gain hands-on experience in our microservice architecture.
• Gain exposure to modern architectures and scaling strategies
• Be responsible for and own feature development from early stages to production release and beyond
• Be ready to mentor engineers and share experience and knowledge
• Engage actively in sprint refinement sessions and design discussions, contributing to team progress and success

We're Excited About You Because You Have:

• 2+ years of professional experience in software development.
• Strong grasp of the Java or Kotlin programming languages.
• Strong experience in RESTful API development and design (preferably in Java / Kotlin)
• Experience with web technologies in general (HTTP Basics, Auth, OWASP, Web Performance, Caching).
• Experience with GraphQL concepts.
• A desire to work on both the back end and front end of our applications.
• A strong work ethic.
• Motivation to learn all about how NM's technology stack and applications work.
• The ability to be a fast learner and self-starter: take initiative to deliver on commitments with quality and consistency under minimal supervision and a limited set of requirements.
• The ability to navigate ambiguity effectively by asking insightful questions, developing effective solutions, and clearly presenting findings to the team to ensure successful outcomes.
• The ability to utilize software engineering principles to create efficient and effective solutions.
• The ability to participate actively in hands-on development activities, contributing to the coding and implementation of solutions.
• Skills in communicating technical solutions effectively to audiences with varying degrees of technical acumen.

Nice to Haves:

• Understanding of financial planning
• Experience building APIs in Spring Boot, NodeJS, or ApolloGQL.
• Experience with React or other frontend Javascript frameworks
• Experience in the NodeJS ecosystem
• Experience developing, releasing, and scaling web applications
• Exposure to system monitoring, logging, and other forms of telemetry
• Able to analyze and improve performance, efficiency, scalability, and stability of various systems
• Experience working with and modeling data for databases (e.g. SQL, Postgres, Mongo)
• Exposure to AWS or other cloud services
• Experience working on a geographically distributed Scrum/Agile team
• Familiarity with:
  • Git, CI/CD
  • Unit, Integration, Regression, Automation, and other testing strategies.
  • Docker and Kubernetes

Compensation Range:
Pay Range - Start:
$84,350.00
Pay Range - End:
$156,650.00
Geographic Specific Pay Structure:
200 - Structure 110: 92,820.00 USD - 172,380.00 USD
200 - Structure 115: 97,020.00 USD - 180,180.00 USD
We believe in fairness and transparency. It's why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you're living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.
Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients' interests at the center of all we do. Get started now!
Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.
FIND YOUR FUTURE
We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging.

• Flexible work schedules
• Concierge service
• Comprehensive benefits
• Employee resource groups