Application Engineer - III

Job description

About VanguardFounded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe—directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries.   Vanguard India Vanguard’s office in India is a significant milestone in our global expansion. We are committed to establishing an enduring technology center in Hyderabad, Telangana and are excited to be adding talent who will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile, and cloud-based technologies that drive our business outcomes and deliver a world-class experience for our clients.   Role Summary • This role provides advanced-level system analysis, design, development, and implementation of applications and databases under general direction, and leads backend optimization, data integration, documentation, and secure, scalable architecture aligned with enterprise standards. About Team and Role: • We are looking for an experienced Server-Side Python/AWS Developer to join a Full-Stack team embracing New Ways of Working (NWoW) in Vanguard’s Global Investments Financial Systems (GIFS) division. • We are rapidly expanding our technology presence in India, so this is an exciting opportunity to join the team, contribute to delivery, build technical depth, and gain exposure to the Investment Management apparatus at Vanguard. • This team builds and supports the technology platforms that enable Vanguard’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data capabilities. The team acquires, manages, enriches and distributes ESG data across the firm. This includes building data ingestion pipelines, APIs, cloud-based data services and workflow capabilities that help ensure ESG data is accurate, secure, well-governed and readily accessible to downstream consumers. • This role focuses on building event-driven, cloud-native systems using Python and AWS, with particular emphasis on Amazon S3 (including Access Points) and DynamoDB, and orchestration via AWS Lambda, Step Functions, and ECS. The team uses agile methodologies and operates a continuous delivery pipeline. • Good hands-on experience implementing Python-based services in a production environment is required. Practical knowledge of AWS or other cloud provider core services is expected. • The successful candidate will be a motivated developer with strong problem-solving skills, a commitment to quality, and good documentation and testing habits. This role requires strong communication and collaboration skills, as well as a proactive mindset—including asking clarifying questions, identifying edge cases, and surfacing risks early. • The role includes daily interaction with business partners and product managers, making effective written and verbal communication essential. • Join us and help us innovate for client success! In this developer role, you will: • Collaborate closely with business users, product managers, and engineering partners - actively asking questions and clarifying requirements to ensure high-quality outcomes.  • Build and maintain Python-based services on AWS, using event-driven patterns tied to S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, Step Functions, and ECS. Contribute to data architecture and implementation decisions, including: • S3 buckets and Access Points • Bucket/object modelling and partitioning • DynamoDB and NoSQL data modelling • REST / GraphQL APIs • Encryption/KMS policies • Performance and scalability considerations • Integrate S3 and DynamoDB with event-driven compute (Lambda), orchestrated workflows (Step Functions), and container workloads (ECS).  • Support end-to-end testing for event-driven systems, including integration testing, schema validation, replay/idempotency scenarios, and testing across AWS services. • Work with Avro for data serialization, including schema usage, schema evolution concepts, and Python libraries such as fastavro or avro. • Maintain good engineering practices through clean code, code reviews, documentation, observability, resilience, and operational readiness. • Provide 3rd-line support as needed and contribute to continuous improvement. What it takes:Technical Expertise • Minimum 5 years of experience in software development, system integration, database design, and back-end architecture. • Bachelor’s degree (B.E./B.Tech) in relevant fields such as Computer Science, or a Master’s degree/Diploma in Computer Science. Python development experience, including: • Object-oriented programming • Type hints and static analysis • Packaging, virtual environments, and dependency management • Concurrency (multiprocessing) • Testing experience using pytest, unittest, and related frameworks Hands-on experience with Amazon S3, including: • S3 Access Points and fine-grained IAM controls • Lifecycle rules, storage classes, multipart uploads Experience working with NoSQL databases such as: • DynamoDB in AWS Experience with:  • AWS Lambda (serverless patterns, event integration, concurrency & retries) • AWS Step Functions (workflow orchestration, error handling, compensating flows) • Amazon ECS (task definitions, service scaling, cont