Senior Manager - Software Engineering

The Enterprise Technology Services organization partners with every part of the American Express business to power the company’s growth and innovation with trust and efficiency and drive competitive differentiation with speed. We support the delivery and operations of technology, digital, and data capabilities, platforms, and services globally. Specifically, our team is responsible for the company’s technology engineering, architecture, and infrastructure, providing 24x7 support to ensure an uninterrupted, high-quality experience for customers and colleagues. We also provide product management for core enterprise platforms, and lead technology risk and information security, enterprise data governance and platforms, digital product and design, and enterprise AI platforms on behalf of the company.

The American Express Global Card Network Platform authorizes and processes all customer card transactions worldwide. As the backbone of American Express, this platform operates as a highly resilient, near real-time, low-latency distributed system, running 24x7x365 at global scale. We are making significant strategic investments to build next-generation card network capabilities, including:

• Card Authorizations, Routing, Clearing & Settlement
• Tokenization and secure payment processing
• Omni-channel platforms and partner connectivity
• Real-time payments and settlement systems
• Data localization and regulatory compliance
• Cloud-native platform engineering and foundational distributed systems

• As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will lead high-performing teams to design, build, and scale these mission-critical systems.

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of highly available, scalable distributed systems supporting global card transactions

• Drive architecture decisions, design reviews, and engineering best practices across teams

• Ensure systems meet stringent requirements for low latency, high throughput, resiliency, and security

• Guide teams in building cloud-native microservices platforms using modern technologies

• Promote engineering excellence through code reviews, design standards, and SDLC best practices

People Leadership & Team Building

• Build, mentor, and lead high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of ownership, innovation, and continuous learning

• Set clear goals, provide coaching, and support career development of engineers and tech leads

• Drive hiring strategies to scale teams with top engineering talent

Strategy & Stakeholder Management

• Partner with Product, Business, and cross-functional teams to define priorities and deliver impactful solutions

• Translate business goals into technical strategy and execution roadmaps

• Influence and align stakeholders across geographies and functions

Innovation & Platform Evolution

• Champion adoption of emerging technologies, open-source solutions, and modern architectures

• Encourage experimentation through POCs and innovation initiatives

• Continuously improve platform capabilities in performance, observability, and reliability

Operational Excellence

• Ensure production systems are stable, observable, and well-supported

• Drive DevOps practices including CI/CD, monitoring, alerting, and incident management

• Maintain compliance with regulatory and security standards in financial systems

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant exposure to building large-scale distributed systems
• Proven experience in leading engineering teams and delivering complex, mission-critical platforms
• Strong background in cloud-native architectures, microservices, and platform engineering
• Experience working in Agile environments with DevOps practices
• Prior experience in payments, financial systems, or high transaction platforms is a strong plus

Technical Skills

• Strong hands-on experience with Java, Spring Boot, or similar backend technologies
• Deep understanding of distributed systems design, scalability, and performance engineering
• Experience with microservices architecture and service mesh technologies (e.g., Envoy, Istio, gRPC)
• Expertise in cloud platforms and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift)
• Experience with messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and distributed caching (Redis, Hazelcast)
• Familiarity with NoSQL and SQL databases (Cassandra, Couchbase, etc.)
• Knowledge of CI/CD tools (Jenkins, Git, Maven, Gradle, Azure DevOps)
• Experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk)

Leadership & Professional Skills

• Strong system design and architecture expertise
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence without authority
• Experience conducting architecture reviews, design reviews, and code reviews across teams
• Ability to drive change, challenge the status quo, and adapt quickly
• Strong presentation skills, including communication with senior leadership