Lead Software Engineer

• This role is four days onsite at our Seneca One Buffalo, NY location, with the flexibility to work from home one day per week
• The Lead Developer provides day-to-day technical leadership to the development team while remaining actively involved in engineering.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.

Requirements

• 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

• 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.

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.
• 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.

Pay

• M&T Bank is committed to fair, competitive, and market-informed pay for our employees.
• The pay range for this position is $116,400.00 - $194,000.00 Annual (USD).
• The successful candidate’s particular combination of knowledge, skills, and experience will inform their specific compensation.

Location

Buffalo, New York, United States of America