What are the responsibilities and job description for the Cloud Software Engineering Director position at State of Wisconsin Investment Board?
Making a Difference
The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), founded in 1951, is a premier global investment organization responsible for managing the more than $156 billion of assets of the fully funded Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS), the State Investment Fund and other state funds. Through SWIB’s effective and innovative investment management, WRS remains one of the only fully funded US public pensions. We are the 9th largest public pension fund in the U.S. and the 25th largest public or private pension fund in the world. SWIB is recognized by the investment industry for our teamwork and innovation. SWIB pursues sophisticated global investment strategies across the asset and risk allocation spectrum. Providers across the investment ecosystem seek to partner with SWIB.
Serving more than 691,000 beneficiaries of the WRS, SWIB is a mission-driven organization focused on providing a strong financial future to those who committed their careers to public service. For public employees and the 1,500 Wisconsin employers who contribute on their behalf, we are a trusted partner. Our team innovates continuously to meet the challenges of an evolving investment landscape while growing and protecting the assets of the WRS.
SWIB provides a strong, steady economic pillar for the state of Wisconsin by growing the trust funds under its management, managing risk, and optimizing costs of the long term. We are a mission-driven organization and the participants we serve are our mission. By bringing a disciplined, prudent, and innovative approach to market opportunities, SWIB has been successful in generating required returns and maintaining the trust of the beneficiaries and stakeholders of the funds we oversee.
Home To Top Talent
Our high-performing staff is key to what makes us a premier investment manager. SWIB is committed to investing in talented professionals to implement our robust, sophisticated investment strategies and to keep the organization at the forefront of the investment industry. We encourage innovation and offer professional development opportunities to help staff sharpen and expand their skills. Approximately 61 percent of SWIB’s investment professionals are Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholders.
Job Description
The Cloud Software Engineering Director is responsible for leading and growing the Cloud Software Engineering team while driving the development of cloud-based services primarily targeting Azure/AWS. The manager will focus on providing cloud native solutions to meet the portfolio management needs of SWIB’s front office. This role combines technical expertise, leadership, and strategic vision, ensuring alignment with organization goals while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence.
Primary Responsibilities
7 years of hands-on experience is required for the following:
Pursuant to our Hybrid Remote Work Policy, all staff have the flexibility to work remotely, but are required to have a weekly presence in our offices, the frequency of which is dependent on their distance from office. Staff are not required to reside locally; however, we offer relocation reimbursement to the Dane County area per our policy.
All SWIB employees are subject to SWIB’s Ethics Policy and Personal Trade Approvals Policy. These policies include restrictions on outside business activities and employment and have limits on personal trading. You may request copies of these policies from SWIB’s talent acquisition team and any questions can be answered by SWIB’s compliance team.
The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), founded in 1951, is a premier global investment organization responsible for managing the more than $156 billion of assets of the fully funded Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS), the State Investment Fund and other state funds. Through SWIB’s effective and innovative investment management, WRS remains one of the only fully funded US public pensions. We are the 9th largest public pension fund in the U.S. and the 25th largest public or private pension fund in the world. SWIB is recognized by the investment industry for our teamwork and innovation. SWIB pursues sophisticated global investment strategies across the asset and risk allocation spectrum. Providers across the investment ecosystem seek to partner with SWIB.
Serving more than 691,000 beneficiaries of the WRS, SWIB is a mission-driven organization focused on providing a strong financial future to those who committed their careers to public service. For public employees and the 1,500 Wisconsin employers who contribute on their behalf, we are a trusted partner. Our team innovates continuously to meet the challenges of an evolving investment landscape while growing and protecting the assets of the WRS.
SWIB provides a strong, steady economic pillar for the state of Wisconsin by growing the trust funds under its management, managing risk, and optimizing costs of the long term. We are a mission-driven organization and the participants we serve are our mission. By bringing a disciplined, prudent, and innovative approach to market opportunities, SWIB has been successful in generating required returns and maintaining the trust of the beneficiaries and stakeholders of the funds we oversee.
Home To Top Talent
Our high-performing staff is key to what makes us a premier investment manager. SWIB is committed to investing in talented professionals to implement our robust, sophisticated investment strategies and to keep the organization at the forefront of the investment industry. We encourage innovation and offer professional development opportunities to help staff sharpen and expand their skills. Approximately 61 percent of SWIB’s investment professionals are Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholders.
Job Description
The Cloud Software Engineering Director is responsible for leading and growing the Cloud Software Engineering team while driving the development of cloud-based services primarily targeting Azure/AWS. The manager will focus on providing cloud native solutions to meet the portfolio management needs of SWIB’s front office. This role combines technical expertise, leadership, and strategic vision, ensuring alignment with organization goals while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence.
Primary Responsibilities
- Build, manage, and mentor a high-performing team of cloud software engineers.
- Establish clear goals, provide feedback, and support career development of team members.
- Foster a collaborative and innovative environment that encourages continuous improvement.
- Define the technical roadmap for cloud-native solutions in alignment with organizational objectives.
- Oversee the design and development of cloud-native (AWS/Azure) microservices and applications, prioritizing correctness, security, accessibility, and performance.
- Guide the integration of distributed systems, containerized applications, and services on Azure/AWS.
- Provide architectural guidance, develop reference architectures and participate in enterprise architecture reviews.
- Research emerging technologies and recommend enhancements to existing technology stack.
- Champion best practices in software development, testing, deployment, and monitoring.
- Ensure robust CI/CD pipelines utilizing GitLab.
- Lead incident response efforts, focusing on root cause analysis and continuous improvement.
- Create and maintain comprehensive documentation, including architecture diagrams, run books, and deployment guides.
- Work closely with product owners, business stakeholders, and end-users to understand requirements and deliver high-quality solutions.
- Coordinate with cross-functional teams integrating new data sources, APIs, and services.
- Serve as a technical liaison, communicating complex ideas effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Oversee support for services with respect to data quality as well as performance to all consuming applications and users.
- Conduct code reviews of other developers and participate in git merge/pull reviews.
- Apply best in class engineering principles, optimized algorithms, and data structure techniques.
- Integrate with other services in the ecosystem or public API’s and databases.
- Recommend flexible solutions to complex business problems using cloud technology best practices.
- Oversee API platform and front-end web-based development.
- 10 years of software development experience, with 5 years in a leadership or management role.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field strongly preferred.
- Understanding of financial markets and familiarity with various asset classes like Equities, Fixed Income and Derivatives.
- Proven ability to lead and inspire in an agile/scrum environment.
- Strong aptitude for mentoring engineers, fostering professional growth, and managing performance.
- Deep understanding of cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and distributed computing principles.
- Deep understanding of developing highly available cloud-based platforms.
- Strong aptitude for highly efficient data structures and algorithms.
- Excellent communication and ability to collaborate well with both technical and non-technical users.
- 5 years working in the Financial Asset Management Industry
7 years of hands-on experience is required for the following:
- Developing scalable solutions using object-oriented programming like Python, Java, C , or C#
- Building JavaScript web applications with a strong preference for React.Js, or related JavaScript framework such as jQuery, Knockout.js, Angular.js
- Querying and designing structured databases on platforms like Snowflake, SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL
- Developing and deploying cloud solutions on AWS/Azure/GCP
- Developing distributed systems on AWS/Azure/GCP
- Using build tools like GitLab
- Implementing and operating container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Nomad, Elastic Container Service (ECS)
- Developing containerized applications o Working directly with end-users to develop requirements, manage backlogs, and conducting work in a sprint/scrum environment
- Shaping business needs leveraging best in class cloud-based technology stack
- Designing and querying NoSQL database engines using technologies like Redis, DynamoDB, Cassandra, or MongoDB
- Building and supporting API gateways including security entitlements and event-based systems leveraging tools like Kafka, AWS SNS, AWS EventBridge, Azure EventGrid
- Implementing Infrastructure-as-Code with a strong preference for Terraform
- Integrating logging and monitoring of cloud based tools such as CloudWatch to tools such as Datadog, Splunk or the ELK stack
- Competitive total cash compensation, based on AON (formerly McLagan) industry benchmarks
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Educational and training opportunities
- Tuition reimbursement
- Challenging work in a professional environment
- Hybrid work environment
Pursuant to our Hybrid Remote Work Policy, all staff have the flexibility to work remotely, but are required to have a weekly presence in our offices, the frequency of which is dependent on their distance from office. Staff are not required to reside locally; however, we offer relocation reimbursement to the Dane County area per our policy.
All SWIB employees are subject to SWIB’s Ethics Policy and Personal Trade Approvals Policy. These policies include restrictions on outside business activities and employment and have limits on personal trading. You may request copies of these policies from SWIB’s talent acquisition team and any questions can be answered by SWIB’s compliance team.
