Staff-Software Engineer - The Personalization,...

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineering (Director equivalent) to help shape and scale the platforms that power brand engagement and experience technology across digital and event-driven journeys. This role will provide deep technical leadership across a diverse stack spanning front-end, back-end, and data technologies that support event management and activation, product discoverability, conversion attribution, customer engagement measurement, and partner integrations. The ideal candidate combines systems thinking, hands-on technical depth, and strong influence across product, engineering, data, and business stakeholders.

The Staff Software Engineer leads the design and implementation of scalable software solutions, provides technical mentorship, oversees platform integration and maintenance, conducts design reviews, collaborates with cross-functional teams, and optimizes development processes to ensure high-quality, reliable, and efficient software systems.

Responsibilities

Technology and Architecture Leadership:

• Lead the design of scalable, resilient systems across web and mobile experiences, APIs, services, data pipelines, and partner integrations, with a focus on high-traffic customer journeys and operational reliability.

• Define and drive architecture and architectural decisions across services, APIs, and event-driven systems, for secure, scalable, low-latency, high-availability brand engagement and experience technology platforms

• Own high-level and detailed design for critical components

• Hands-on development of proof of concepts (POCs) and rapid prototypes to validate new technologies, AI capabilities, and customer experience innovations, including collaboration with third-party partners and vendors where applicable.

• Oversee health and quality of code across the portfolio and drive engineering excellence through detailed design reviews and code inspections, offering constructive feedback to uphold high coding standards and architectural integrity, observability, performance optimization, testing, and modern CI/CD practices.

• Oversees the integration and maintenance of new and existing platform components, ensuring optimal performance, reliability, and scalability of software systems

• Build and promote reusable frameworks, libraries, and platform components to accelerate engineering velocity and consistency

• Designs and drives autonomous AI agent orchestration capabilities that enable intelligent automation, adaptive workflow execution, and scalable decision-making across platforms.

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and coaching to engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, excellence, continuous learning, and high engineering standards

Collaboration & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner closely with product teams, business partners, data engineering, and platform engineering to translate product goals into scalable technical solutions

• Provide technical mentorship and thought leadership across engineering teams, helping unblock complex challenges and elevating overall engineering standards

• Influence platform evolution and enterprise alignment by representing the domain in architecture forums and helping establish reusable patterns, shared services, and integration standards.

Innovation Leadership:

• Act as the team's technical scout by exploring and researching industry trends with a demonstrated curiosity and learning agility, biased for rapid prototyping and continuous improvement

• Identify opportunities to apply AI-assisted engineering, analytics, or creative enablement capabilities within a modern engagement platform., We back our colleagues with the support they need to thrive, professionally and personally. That's why we have Amex Flex, our enterprise working model that provides greater flexibility to colleagues while ensuring we preserve the important aspects of our unique in-person culture. Depending on role and business needs, colleagues will either work onsite, in a hybrid model (combination of in-office and virtual days) or fully virtually.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, advanced degree highly preferred

• Extensive expertise in a technical domain, and advanced expertise across multiple technical and business domains.

• Strong understanding of data systems (relational and NoSQL) and core computer science fundamentals.

• A Full-stack expert with extensive hands-on experience building distributed applications and managing the development of complex, large scale enterprise applications and products that require a deep understanding of application logic and dependencies.

• Deep expertise in API design and integration patterns, including synchronous and asynchronous workflows, versioning, and backward compatibility.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including fault tolerance, latency tradeoffs, consistency models, and failure isolation.

• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate complex, ambiguous systems

• Proven technical leadership and/or hands-on experience across a diverse stack, including modern front-end technologies, back-end services, enterprise grade APIs, event driven architectures, and data processing systems (JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Node.js, Java/Spring Boot, Python, PySpark, Big Query, Hive, Kafka, cloud-native patterns)

• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azzure) and containerization

• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, influence architectural outcomes, and drive engineering quality at scale

• Strong communication and collaboration skills with a track record of influencing across teams and technical functions

• Experience with Generative AI (LLMs, embeddings, prompt workflows, developer tooling)

• Knowledge of observability and SRE practices (metrics, logging, tracing)

• Experience with zero-downtime deployments (blue-green, canary)

• Knowledge on vibe coding using Github Copilot/Devin/Claude and efficient use for diverse use cases

Preferred domain experience

• Familiarity with Adobe Marketing and Creative suite of products highly desirable

• Experience in marketing technologies leveraging first and third-party data.

• Experience in brand, marketing, advertising, or experiential technology domains, including systems that connect digital journeys with in-person experiences.

• Familiarity with event and activation platforms, lead capture, ticketing or access integrations, partner APIs, and operational tooling used during live experiences.

• Experience with discoverability, SEO/AEO/GEO experimentation, campaign measurement, or attribution capabilities that improve customer engagement and business outcomes.

• Exposure to privacy-conscious data design, consent-aware integrations, and secure handling of customer and partner data.

• Experience building or supporting platforms that connect digital engagement with operational workflows such as event management, activation support, enrollment, partner integration, or customer measurement.

• Deep understanding of data flows and measurement design, including instrumentation, experimentation, conversion analysis, attribution, and analytics that inform product and marketing decision.

• Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the U.S. is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Joining Amex Tech means discovering and shaping your contribution to something big. Here, you can work alongside talented tech teams and build a unique career with the Powerful Backing of American Express. With a range of opportunities to work with the latest technologies, and a commitment to back the broader engineering community through open source, our mission is to power your success. Because Amex Tech is powered by our technology, our culture, and our colleagues. The Technology organization enables and accelerates the company's growth strategies, delivering global capabilities and services in support of Amex's customers and colleagues, while maintaining 24/7 servicing and availability to ensure an uninterrupted, high-quality customer experience. Technology provides the foundation for everything we do in the company while driving differentiation through building and leveraging innovative technology and data insight. The U.S. Consumer Services and Digital Technology Team brings together foundational strategic technology capabilities in digital experience engineering, marketing technology, enterprise communications, travel, lifestyle and entertainment experiences, underpinned by our data technology model that enables hyper personalization. It employs a ground-breaking focus with development responsibilities for customer-facing capabilities that deepen and expand digital engagement, as well as core technical capabilities that cut across business lines and customer segments. The Personalization, Brand, and Communications Technology (PBCT) team, within USCDT, brings together many of our targeting efforts and stitch together multiple connections that customers have with us 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. The Brand Engagement and Experience team builds technology solutions to create, configure, manage, and measure customer engagement with our membership benefits, specifically memorable experiences and events, while creating and providing actionable data insights to enable differentiated experiences and optimize marketing and advertising spend. Embrace the opportunity to collaborate with a forward-thinking team dedicated to pioneering solutions that redefine industry standards and elevate customer satisfaction, while maintaining compliance standards., At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values (https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/company/who-we-are/) and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. From delivering differentiated products to providing world-class customer service, we operate with a strong risk mindset, ensuring we continue to uphold our brand promise of trust, security, and service. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience our powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career. Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express. We back you with benefits that support your holistic well-being so you can be and deliver your best. This means caring for you and your loved ones' physical, financial, and mental health, as well as providing the flexibility you need to thrive personally and professionally