Lead Software Development Engineer

Job description

At PitchBook, a Morningstar company, we are always looking forward. We continue to innovate, evolve, and invest in ourselves to bring out the best in everyone. We’re deeply collaborative and thrive on the excitement, energy, and fun that reverberates throughout the company.

Our extensive learning programs and mentorship opportunities help us create a culture of curiosity that pushes us to always find new solutions and better ways of doing things. The combination of a rapidly evolving industry and our high ambitions means there’s going to be some ambiguity along the way, but we excel when we challenge ourselves. We’re willing to take risks, fail fast, and do it all over again in the pursuit of excellence.

If you have a good attitude and are willing to roll up your sleeves to get things done, PitchBook is the place for you.

About the Role:

As a member of the Product and Engineering team at PitchBook, you will be part of a team of big thinkers, innovators, and problem solvers who strive to deepen the positive impact we have on our customers and our company every day. We value curiosity and the drive to find better ways of doing things. We thrive on customer empathy, which remains our focus when creating excellent customer experiences through product innovation.

We know that greatness is achieved through collaboration and diverse points of view, so we work closely with partners around the globe. As a team, we assume positive intent in each other’s words and actions, value constructive discussions, and foster a respectful working environment built on integrity, growth, and business value. We invest heavily in our people, who are eager to learn and constantly improve. Join our team and grow with us!

The Authentication & Identity team owns the platform that powers login, identity lifecycle, and authorization across PitchBook products.  We design and operate microservices that manage user accounts, SSO, MFA, token issuance, and identity integrations with enterprise customers.

The team is globally distributed across the US and Europe and collaborates closely with Product, Security, Platform Engineering, Architecture, and adjacent SAT teams.  We value technical rigor, ownership, and deep curiosity as we continue modernizing our identity architecture and building resilient, secure, and high-performance services.

PitchBook’s Identity Platform team powers the authentication and authorization experiences used by every customer and internal system.  As a Lead Software Development Engineer, you serve as the technical leader and primary driver of the team’s direction, shaping architecture, coordinating execution, and ensuring high-quality delivery of our identity services.

This role is a blend of hands-on engineering, technical decision-making, and team leadership.  You will own the technical roadmap for identity services, partner closely with Product, Architecture, Security, and other engineering teams, and ensure our systems are secure, scalable, reliable, and aligned with PitchBook’s long-term strategy.

If you excel at driving technical initiatives, influencing cross-functional partners, and setting a clear direction for a team working on mission-critical systems, this role offers an opportunity for significant impact.

Primary Job Responsibilities:

• Lead design and architecture for new and evolving microservices, ensuring scalability, resiliency, and strong security posture
• Shape the roadmap in partnership with key stakeholders (e.g., Product Manager, Architect, and other cross-functional partners), providing technical vision and clarity
• Own architectural documentation, design reviews, and technical proposals for significant initiatives
• Guide modernization of legacy components into well-structured, cloud-native distributed systems
• Ensure services meet PitchBook’s engineering standards for architecture, reliability, security, test coverage, and performance
• Drive continuous improvement in CI/CD, deployment practices, and operational processes
• Act as the day-to-day technical leader of the team, aligning work, resolving ambiguity, and ensuring effective execution
• Coordinate cross-team initiatives with Product, Architecture, Platform, and adjacent SAT teams
• Break down complex projects, sequence technical work, and manage dependencies across the engineering organization
• Own technical delivery of medium-to-large initiatives, ensuring timely completion and high quality
• Identify risks early and collaborate with Product, Security, and Engineering leadership to mitigate
• Champion engineering excellence in design, testing, reliability, observability, and operational practices
• Provide light mentorship and technical guidance to engineers as needed
• Write high-quality, well-tested, maintainable Java/Spring Boot code
• Build secure, high-performance APIs and microservices supporting identity and access flows
• Implement features such as MFA, SSO, OAuth/OIDC flows, identity lifecycle, and provisioning logic
• Diagnose and resolve complex issues across distributed systems and cloud infrastructure
• Enhance observability, monitoring, diagnostics, and system resilience
• Participate in the team’s on-call rotation to ensure availability, reliability, and timely incident response for identity services
• Maintain strong working relationships with Product, Architecture, Security, Platform Engineering, and SAT leads
• Act as the technical representative of the Identity team in roadmap discussions, architecture forums, incident reviews, and cross-team planning
• Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, and proposals clearly to stakeholders of varying technical backgrounds
• Proactively identify risks and gaps, drive alignment, and ensure successful delivery of identity-related initiatives
• Support the vision and values of the company through role modeling and encouraging desired behaviors
• Participate in various company initiatives and projects as requested

Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including designing and building backend services
• Strong Java & Spring Boot expertise (or equivalent OO backend languages with ability to ramp quickly)
• Experience building and operating distributed systems and cloud-native microservices (AWS/GCP preferred)
• Hands-on experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Solid understanding of secure coding practices and common attack vectors in distributed systems
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and influence architectural direction
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, especially in distributed teams
• Must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future
• Experience with authentication and identity technologies (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, SAML, MFA) preferred
• Experience decomposing monolithic systems into microservices preferred
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks (SOC2, GDPR) related to identity and data protection preferred
• Experience with relational databases (Postgres, MSSQL) and data modeling for identity domains preferred
• Background with event-driven architectures or messaging platforms preferred
• Experience integrating AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) preferred
• Prior experience supporting production identity or security-critical services preferred

Benefits + Compensation at PitchBook:

Physical Health

• Comprehensive health benefits
• Additional medical wellness incentives
• STD, LTD, AD&D, and life insurance

Emotional Health

• Paid sabbatical program after four years
• Paid family and paternity leave
• Annual educational stipend
• Ability to apply for tuition reimbursement
• CFA exam stipend
• Robust training programs on industry and soft skills
• Employee assistance program
• Generous allotment of vacation days, sick days, and volunteer days

Social Health

• Matching gifts program
• Employee resource groups
• Subsidized emergency childcare
• Dependent Care FSA
• Company-wide events
• Employee referral bonus program
• Quarterly team building events

Financial Health

• 401k match
• Shared ownership employee stock program
• Monthly transportation stipend

*Please be aware the above PitchBook benefit and perk offerings are subject to corresponding plan and policy documents and may change during the course of your employment.

Compensation

• Annual base salary: $160,000-$180,610
• Target annual bonus percentage: 15%

Working Conditions:

This role follows a hybrid work model, which currently requires employees to be in the office four days per week.  One dedicated focus day each week is designated for minimal meetings and deep work.  Regular use of a computer and phone is required.

We are excited to get to know you and your background. Concerned that you might not meet every requirement? We encourage you to still apply as you might be the right candidate for the role or other roles at PitchBook.

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