Lead Software Engineer

Our Team
Morningstar believes in empowering investors through research, data, design, and technology. Morningstar Direct (https://www.morningstar.com/products/direct) is Morningstar's flagship software product that helps Asset and Wealth Managers build and manage their portfolios and communicate with their clients. Our team is building the next generation of analytical tools in Morningstar Direct called Analytics Lab (https://www.morningstar.com/products/direct/analytics-lab).
We love working with technology that is changing the way quantitative analytics is being done in the world. We believe in providing users access to Morningstar's data via tools and programming languages that are already loved and used by the data science community. Our vision is to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and use many of the open-source data analytics technologies to build our platform. You will dive deep into open-source software projects and learn how they are used in financial engineering.
We are deeply inquisitive; we do not take "that's just the way it's always been done" or "that's just best practice" as valid answers and instead seek to fine-tune our product development process for maximum impact. We are empowered professionals who are given problems to solve and not tickets to implement. We value team productivity over individual productivity and this culture of "giving" means we enjoy and highly value collaborating with our teammates.
Role
In this role you will be one of the "senior" engineers of a cross-functional squad that's building out Analytics Lab. This squad will be largely in North America. As part of the team, you will also work closely with the quantitative analysts (aka data scientists), product managers, and software engineers to help shape the product and content. This role could be as an individual contributor or some mix of hands-on engineering work with managing/mentoring engineers. You will be exposed to all aspects of product development: design of user experience, system architecture, model development, productionizing models, API/library/CLI development, data visualization tools, code reviews, automated testing, infrastructure as code, systems monitoring & reliability, and support (one week of on-call duties approximately every 2 months). This is a hybrid role, with approximately 2-3 days working in the office.
Qualifications

• Friendly and enjoys working in a collaborative team with excellent spoken and written communication skills. Humble, honest, and to the point.
• Deep experience with at least one programming language.
• Solid understanding of computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, design patterns.
• Approximately 6 years of professional experience in technology or an adjacent field is required.

• Experience with engineering practices such as writing design documents, performing code reviews, pair programming, taking part in agile product development processes.
• Experience working with cloud services, preferably AWS.
• Experience building/using RESTful APIs.
• Experience with databases such as Postgres, Redshift, MS SQL.
• Experience with Linux.

• Knowledge of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, application protocols, security).

Nice to Haves - Not Requirements!

• Managing/leading a team of engineers.
• Recruiting and building a team of engineers.
• Experience with Python.
• Experience with Flask, Django, Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET MVC or other web app development frameworks.
• Experience with web application development (HTML/CSS and a modern JavaScript Framework like Vue.js, Angular, React).

• Experience with tools like Pandas, Jupyter, Numpy, Matplotlib.
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, Teamcity or CodeDeploy.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes.
• Experience with infrastructure as code tools. Terraform is a plus, but any tools in this area such as CloudFormation, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.
• Experience with cluster computing tools such as Spark, Dask and AWS EMR.

• Experience with AWS data lake tools, such as Lake Formation, Athena, and Glue.
• Experience with tools like Domino Data Labs, SageMaker, Iguazio, Dotscience, Gradient, Comet.

Morningstar is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, or disability. All individuals are encouraged to apply.
We thank all applicants for their interest, but only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
If selected for an interview, we will be happy to work with you to ensure your interview is accessible and that a reasonable accommodation is provided. When your interview is being scheduled, please recommend us of how we might be able to support your participation.