Senior Software Development Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Morningstar is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Senior Software Engineer to help shape the future of our next-generation Data Delivery Platform. This platform provides seamless access to Morningstar's global investment data and powers data-driven experiences used by investors, financial professionals, and institutions worldwide. Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the platform is designed to deliver highly scalable, secure, and performant APIs and services that enable clients to access critical financial data with speed, reliability, and flexibility. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will play a key role in designing, building, and evolving cloud-native applications and distributed systems that support some of Morningstar's most strategic data initiatives. You will collaborate closely with product managers, team leaders, architects, and engineers across multiple agile squads to transform complex business requirements into innovative technical solutions. This position offers the opportunity to influence architectural decisions, champion engineering best practices, and contribute to the development of modern, high-availability systems that operate at enterprise scale.

The ideal candidate is passionate about software craftsmanship, cloud technologies, and solving complex technical challenges. You enjoy working in a collaborative environment where innovation, continuous learning, and ownership are highly valued. You are comfortable navigating ambiguity, driving solutions from concept to production, and mentoring others while helping establish engineering excellence across the organization.

By joining Morningstar, you will have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technologies, contribute to products that impact global investors, and help build a platform that serves as the foundation for Morningstar's future data delivery strategy.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement cloud-native microservices and APIs that support millions of data requests while maintaining high availability and performance. Participate in architectural design and contribute to long-term platform modernization initiatives.
• Partners with cross-functional stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions in data platform.
• Champion engineering best practices including test driven development, observability, code reviews, CI/CD, and operational excellence.
• Troubleshoot and resolve urgent production issues while continuously improving system reliability and resilience.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies including new data engineering solutions and Generative AI to improve platform capabilities and developer productivity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building enterprise-scale applications and distributed systems.
• Strong programming experience with Java and Spring Boot; additional experience with Python is a plus.
• Deep understanding of object-oriented design principles, design patterns, domain-driven design, and modern software architecture.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying cloud-native solutions on AWS with services such as ECS, Lambda, S3, SNS, SQS, CloudWatch, and IAM.
• Strong knowledge of databases including SQL Server, Redis, MongoDB, and data modeling best practices.
• Experience developing RESTful APIs and highly available, scalable backend services.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code, and DevOps practices.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across technical and business teams.
• Experience with financial services, investment data, market data platforms, or fintech environments is a plus.

Base Salary Compensation Range

$93,200.00-$136,696.00

Incentive Target Percentage

12.5% Annual

Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.

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