Champion a high-pressure, high-ownership engineering culture — establish SLOs/SLAs, observability practices, and incident response standards that reflect the criticality of the platform
Grow and develop your team — invest in people through coaching, clear expectations, stretch assignments, and a feedback culture that rewards growth and continuous improvement
Stay close to the technology — remain hands-on enough to assess technical risk, evaluate architectural tradeoffs, and earn credibility with your engineers through genuine technical depth
Lead with humility and curiosity — actively solicit ideas from your team, challenge assumptions (including your own), and foster a culture where innovation is everyone's responsibility
Collaborate with offshore teams — partner effectively with distributed engineering teams across time zones, ensuring alignment on priorities, clear communication of technical standards, and seamless integration of offshore contributions into the platform roadmap
The above statements are intended only to describe the general nature of the job and should not be construed as an all-inclusive list of position responsibilities.
Job Requirements
8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in an engineering leadership role
Demonstrated experience owning a high-volume, business-critical API platform — ideally one processing large volume of transactions per day where availability directly impacts revenue
Deep working knowledge of Java and Spring Boot; ability to guide architectural decisions and review code credibly
Familiarity with generative AI and LLM integration and a forward-looking instinct for where AI fits in an API platform
RESTful API design, microservices architecture, and API lifecycle governance at scale
Proficiency with API design patterns — GraphQL, gRPC, and/or OpenAPI/Swagger — with strong opinions on when to use each
AWS cloud-native development — hands-on with ECS Fargate, API Gateway, Lambda, SQS, S3, and related services
Relational and NoSQL databases
Distributed systems fundamentals — resilience patterns, fault tolerance, eventual consistency, and performance tuning under high-concurrency load
Track record of performance optimization and scalability work — load testing, capacity planning, and incident response in production environments
Exceptional communication skills — able to translate complex technical concepts for executives, business partners, and engineers alike, and to listen as well as they speak
Proven record of building and developing engineering teams — hiring well, retaining top talent, and creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages bold ideas
Experience leading teams in Agile/Scrum environments with a bias toward delivery, learning, and continuous iteration
Experience managing through a high-severity platform incident (outage, degradation, or security event) at scale
Background in fintech, payments, e-commerce, or any domain where API uptime is tied directly to transaction revenue
Event-driven architecture experience (Kafka, SNS/SQS, EventBridge) in a high-throughput production context
Hands-on experience with observability tooling (Datadog, Splunk, or similar) and a philosophy of building platforms that are easy to monitor and debug
Company Benefits
Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
Flexible Spending Account
Health Savings Account
401(k) Plan with Company Match
Company-paid Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
Company-paid Life Insurance
Paid Holidays and Vacation
Employee Referral Program
Employee Assistance Program
Wellness Programs
Paid Community Service Opportunities
Tuition Reimbursement
Ongoing Training & Personal Development
And More!
About Safe-Guard Products International
Safe-Guard serves Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), top retailers, and independent agents in the automotive finance and insurance industry with the leading Protection Products Platform. Our platform delivers innovative protection products and solutions that protect consumers from the perils of ownership, while providing Finance &Insurance professionals the tools to ignite scalable and sustainable business growth. Safe-Guard’s success is driven by over 850 employees, who serve more than 12,000 dealers and support contract holders across the U.S. and Canada.
For 30 years and counting, our team continues to transform the motor vehicle space, earning a stellar reputation from our partners and peers by providing: 1) the highest quality protection products in the industry, 2) a broad platform of branded product, technology, marketing, and training solutions, and 3) an unwavering commitment to uncomplicated care and customer service.
Safe-Guard Products International is an equal opportunity employer and gives consideration for employment to qualified applicants without regard to age, race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, marital status, disability or protected veteran status, or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
