Sr. Software Development Engineer

Clearwater Analytics is looking for a Senior Software Engineer who is as comfortable whiteboarding a system architecture as they are writing production-grade Java. This is a force-multiplier role — someone who sets the technical direction for the team, raises the bar on design and code quality, and helps others grow in the process.

You will work at the intersection of complex financial systems and modern engineering — building scalable, highly available services that support investment accounting, payments, and cash operations for some of the world's largest institutional investors. Beyond writing code, you'll be expected to research, collaborate cross-functionally, dig into documentation, and understand how your work connects to the broader product and business.

If you bring deep system experience, a curiosity for financial concepts, and a genuine drive to architect things the right way — not just ship and move on — this role is for you.

Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Architect scalable, maintainable systems and services — setting the technical direction and raising the standard for the team
• Lead technical breakdown of features and capabilities into well-scoped stories and deliverables
• Drive design and architectural decisions, contributing to documentation including system requirements, process flows, and sequence diagrams
• Consult on quality, scaling, and performance requirements before development on new features begins
• Identify and propose solutions for systemic problems — not just symptoms

Full-Stack Engineering

• Write and maintain high-quality Java across the full stack — backend services, APIs, and data pipelines
• Build and own critical processes that are highly available, scalable, and observable in production
• Work with relational databases; design for performance and data integrity across distributed systems
• Integrate with messaging systems (Rabbit MQ, Kafka, Cloud Pub/Sub, SQS/SNS) and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Support payments and cash operations including wire transfers — building reliable, accurate, and auditable financial processing

AI, Agentic Coding & Continuous Learning

• Actively leverage AI and agentic coding tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and explore new approaches to problem-solving
• Stay current with emerging technologies and bring relevant advancements back to the team
• Apply AI/ML techniques where appropriate to enhance product capabilities and engineering processes

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Research

• Partner with product teams, adjacent engineering teams, and business stakeholders to understand requirements, document processes, and align on solutions
• Research and synthesize technical documentation, third-party systems, and domain knowledge — translating complexity into actionable engineering direction
• Understand client needs and connect day-to-day engineering work to real-world usage and business outcomes

Mentorship & Team Development

• Mentor and develop less experienced engineers — inside and outside your immediate team
• Champion engineering best practices: unit testing, design for testability, code review, and maintainability
• Willingly take on unowned or cross-cutting work that improves team velocity and overall quality

Required

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep expertise in an object-oriented language
• True full-stack experience — database, backend services, APIs, and front-end technologies
• Strong system design and architecture experience — you can design for scale, resilience, and long-term maintainability
• Solid SDLC and agile delivery background
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and distributed systems
• Experience with messaging systems such as Rabbit MQ, Kafka, Cloud
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills — comfortable working across engineering, product, and business teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to produce clear technical documentation and present complex designs concisely

Nice to Have

• Direct experience in investment accounting, payments processing, or cash/wire transfer systems
• Background in big data and NoSQL technologies (Spark, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Vertica, HBase)
• Experience with Angular and Typescript
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML model development or agentic coding frameworks
• Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and production monitoring
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field

You are the engineer others come to when something is hard. You architect with the future in mind, write code you'd be proud to revisit in two years, and push the team's standards higher just by showing up.

You are intellectually curious — whether that means diving into a new financial concept, researching how a third-party system works, or experimenting with the latest AI and agentic coding tools. You don't wait to be handed context; you go find it.

You collaborate genuinely. You engage cross-functionally not as a checkbox, but because you understand that the best software gets built when engineering, product, and the business are truly aligned. You communicate with clarity and care, and you bring the same generosity to mentoring your teammates as you do to your own craft.