Lead Software Engineer
M&T Bank · Buffalo · $116,400–$194,000 (stated in the posting)
This role is four days onsite at our Seneca One Buffalo, NY location, with the flexibility to work from home one day per week
Position Summary
The Lead Developer provides day-to-day technical leadership to the development team while remaining actively involved in engineering. The role leads complex development efforts, translates solution designs into high-quality implementations, establishes development standards, performs technical and code reviews, troubleshoots challenging production issues, and mentors developers.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and develop enterprise applications and backend services using Python.
- Build and maintain web services and application components using Flask and related Python frameworks.
- Design, develop, integrate, and support RESTful APIs and applications based on microservices and service-oriented architectures.
- Mentor developers across Python, Flask, APIs, microservices, SQL, databases, DevOps, CI/CD, testing, AI-assisted engineering, and troubleshooting.
- Lead the design and implementation of complex applications, services, integrations, APIs, and data-driven solutions.
- Translate business and architectural requirements into detailed technical designs and implementation approaches.
- Provide technical direction to developers throughout design, development, testing, implementation, and production support.
- Lead technical-design and code-review sessions and ensure solutions follow established engineering standards.
- Develop complex SQL queries, stored procedures, data-access components, and database integrations. Expertise in Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database or PostgreSQL.
- Review and diagnose query-performance problems and perform SQL performance tuning and optimization for scalability, supportability, and maintainability.
- Develop reusable components, frameworks, utilities, and engineering patterns where they can improve consistency and development efficiency.
- Troubleshoot end-to-end application performance issues across the API, application, data-access, and database layers.
- Use GitLab for source-code management and team development workflows.
- Develop, maintain, and continuously improve CI/CD pipelines supporting application build, testing, validation, and deployment processes.
- Integrate automated unit testing, code-quality checks, and applicable security scanning into development workflows.
- Demonstrate proficiency with AI-assisted development tools and effectively incorporate them into day-to-day software engineering.
- Review and validate AI-generated code and recommendations through appropriate engineering review, testing, security evaluation, and established controls.
- Perform peer code reviews and ensure critical changes receive appropriate technical review.
- Drive resolution of defects and recurring technical issues through root-cause analysis rather than short-term fixes. Participate in troubleshooting of complex production incidents and drive sustainable corrective actions.
- Work collaboratively with Product Owners and Agile team members to assess technical feasibility, complexity, dependencies, and risks.
Education and Experience Required:
- Associate’s degree and a minimum of 7 years’ systems analysis and/or application development work experience or Bachelor's degree and a minimum of 5 years' systems analysis and/or application development work experience. In lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 9 year’s education and/or relevant work experience, including a minimum of 5 years’ system analysis and/or application development work experience.
- Python
- Flask
- RESTful API design and development
- Microservices
- Object-oriented and modular application design
- Application integration
- Automated/unit testing
- Debugging and troubleshooting
- Microsoft SQL Server/Oracle/PostgreSQL
- Advanced SQL
- SQL query optimization and performance tuning
- Application/database integration
- GitLab
- CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
- Build and deployment automation
- Automated testing
- Code-quality and security integration
Education and Experience Preferred:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
- Significant hands-on software-development experience with demonstrated ownership of complex application components or solutions.
- Experience serving as a Senior Developer, Lead Developer, or comparable technical leadership role.
- Strong understanding of the software-development lifecycle and Agile development practices.
- Demonstrated ability to independently diagnose and resolve complex technical issues.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to developers, architects, product partners, and management.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Experience working in enterprise environments with established technology, security, risk, and change-management controls.
- Financial-services or banking technology experience.
- Experience developing or supporting business-critical enterprise applications.
- Experience with high-volume or data-intensive systems.
- Experience with application modernization and legacy-platform transformation.
- Knowledge of secure software-development practices.
- Experience with production incident resolution, performance optimization, and root-cause analysis.
- Experience operating across development, database, middleware/integration, and infrastructure boundaries.
- Exposure to cloud-native development, containerization, or orchestration platforms would be beneficial where relevant to the team.
- Experience with AI-assisted development tools productively while maintaining strong engineering judgment and review.