Software Engineer - Backend

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities. This is a Software Engineering position at the Director level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs. Morgan Stanley is an industry leader in financial services, known for mobilizing capital to help governments, corporations, institutions, and individuals around the world achieve their financial goals. Interested in joining a team that’s eager to create, innovate and make an impact on the world? Read on. Build real systems. Own real problems. Ship at scale. We are looking for a strong backend engineer with around 4+ years of hands-on experience building and operating production-grade services. This role is for engineers who enjoy thinking through ambiguity, designing clean abstractions, and understanding how systems behave under load, failure, and change. If you like solving real engineering problems, not toy puzzles, and want to work close to distributed systems, APIs, data, and platform concerns, this role is for you. What you’ll do in the role: Designing and building new backend services and APIs from scratch Working on distributed systems with real scalability, latency, and reliability constraints Making thoughtful trade-offs across performance, consistency, and complexity Writing clean, maintainable, and testable code that others enjoy working with Owning services end-to-end: design - build - deploy - operate Debugging production issues and improving system resilience over time Core Engineering Skills Strong proficiency in Java and Python as primary languages for backend engineering Solid understanding of HTTP fundamentals Strong grasp of object-oriented design, clean class modeling, and design patterns with multi-threaded and event-driven systems Awareness of me Good command of data structures and collections, and when to use them Hands-on experience with multi-thread and event-driven systems. Awareness of memory usage, time and space complexity Framework & Platform Knowledge Experience with dependency injection and lifecycle management Understanding of AOP concepts (advice, pointcuts, cross-cutting concerns) Experience with transaction management Familiarity with connection pools and resource management System Design & Distributed Systems Exposure Experience designing read and write APIs focused on stability, scalability, and performance Exposure to real-world event-driven systems, pub-sub patterns, and fault tolerance Familiarity with caching strategies (local and distributed) Practical understanding of batch processing and data pipelines is a plus Practical understanding of logging, monitoring, and observability Working knowledge of security fundamentals (authentication, authorization, encryption) How You Work You are comfortable thinking out loud and reasoning through problems You do not need perfectly defined requirements to get started You focus on clarity, correctness, and simplicity You can explain why you made a design choice, not just what you built You take ownership and follow problems through to resolution What You Can Expect From the Interview Process Hands-on, real-world problem discussions No tell me about yourself or resume walkthroughs Focus on how you think, design, and reason Interactive conversations, not trivia or puzzle solving Why Join Us Work on meaningful systems with real impact Engineering culture that values depth over buzzwords Opportunity to grow into system design and ownership roles Smart peers, real problems, and room to think What you’ll bring to the role: Strong proficiency in Java and Python for backend application development. Solid understanding of Object-Oriented Design, Design Patterns, and data structures. 4+ years of relevant experience. Experience building scalable REST