Lead Software Engineer

Position Title: Lead Software Engineer

The Area: The Morningstar Indexes Team leverages its expertise in equity research, manager research, asset allocation, and portfolio construction to create innovative investment solutions. It uses Morningstar’s intellectual property to create indexes that empower investors to achieve their goals at every stage of the investment process—market monitoring, benchmarking, and asset allocation. The fast-growing business offers a broad suite of global equity, bond, commodity and asset allocation indexes.

The Role: The team is looking for a full-stack software engineer who is experienced and comfortable working both on frontend user interfaces as well as the backend systems that support them, using a variety of technologies including Vue.js, Node, AWS, and Spring-boot microservices. In this role, you will collaborate with the Indexes Technology Leadership, Indexes Marketing Team, Scrum Master, business analysts, developers, designers, and QA to build technology solutions for Morningstar Indexes, primarily focusing on the public-facing website (indexes.morningstar.com). This role is a hands-on position, and a large portion of your time will be spent designing and developing solutions yourself, but you will also be asked to take the lead reviewing the code from other team members, guiding less senior developers, and ensuring best practices are followed. You should have a strong understanding of modern web development frameworks, object-oriented principles, design patterns, familiarity with multiple programming languages, and exposure to a variety of architectures.

This is a hybrid role based in our Chicago location.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain the software code base of Indexes. Hands-on development will be an integral part of the responsibilities.
• Help implement software solutions that meet product requirements and quality needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability, reliability, schedules, and adherence to Indexes goals and principles.
• Be a role model to the team, collaborating on good designs & patterns. Reinforce good development practices like test driven development, and continuous integration.
• Identify and make recommendations for process improvements and areas of tech debt clean up. Introduce improved development practices, innovative frameworks, and technology solutions that help the team move faster.
• Follow best practices like estimation, planning, reporting, and improvement in everyday work, and foster an atmosphere of experimentation and continuous learning.
• Learn the Morningstar Design System and ensure conformance of the Indexes website to the company-wide design standards.
• Help guide a distributed Agile squad to meet business goals and provide technical leadership

Requirements:

• Completed Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering
• Minimum of 7 years of experience developing software solutions
• Experience building web applications using modern web UI frameworks like Vue.js/React/Angular (preferably Vue.js)
• Experience building backends in Node
• Experience implementing RESTful APIs and microservices
• Experience building applications in AWS (ECS, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ELB, CloudFront, Route53)
• Hands on experience with SQL and/or NoSQL databases (preferably PostgreSQL, DynamoDB).
• Experience with modern development practices in areas of product design, requirement analysis, test driven development, and test automation.
• Experience in analysis, design, coding, and implementation of multi-tiered applications
• Ability and willingness to learn new technologies.
• Excellent listening, written, and verbal communication skills

Good to Have:

• Experience with Java, Spring, and Spring Boot
• Knowledge of Python
• AWS Certification
• Knowledge of ContentStack, or other headless CMS
• Knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, or other containerization platforms
• Knowledge of Terraform, Jenkins, Nexus, or other deployment/CI tools.
• Knowledge of SEO concepts
• Knowledge of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
• Exposure to Capital Market domain (Indexes, Equities, etc.)
• Be aware of activity in the open-source world. Contributing back to open source is a big plus.

EOE Statement:

Morningstar is an equal opportunity employer.

Compensation and Benefits

At Morningstar we believe people are at their best when they are at their healthiest. That’s why we champion your wellness through a wide-range of programs that support all stages of your personal and professional life. Here are some examples of the offerings we provide:

• Financial Health
  • 75% 401k match up to 7%
  • Stock Ownership Potential
  • Company provided life insurance - 1x salary + commission

• Physical Health 
  • Comprehensive health benefits (medical/dental/vision) including potential premium discounts and company-provided HSA contributions (up to $500-$2,000 annually) for specific plans and coverages
  • Additional medical Wellness Incentives - up to $300-$600 annual
  • Company-provided long- and short-term disability insurance

• Emotional Health 
  • Trust-Based Time Off
  • 6-week Paid Sabbatical Program
  • 6-Week Paid Family Caregiving Leave
  • Competitive 8-24 Week Paid Parental Bonding Leave
  • Adoption Assistance
  • Leadership Coaching & Formal Mentorship Opportunities
  • Annual Education Stipend
  • Tuition Reimbursement

• Social Health 
  • Charitable Matching Gifts program
  • Dollars for Doers volunteer program
  • Paid volunteering days
  • 15+ Employee Resource & Affinity Groups

Base Salary Compensation Range

Total Cash Compensation Range

Morningstar’s hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to work remotely and collaborate in-person each week. While some positions are available as fully remote, we’ve found that we’re at our best when we’re purposely together on a regular basis, typically three days 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.