Principal Platform Engineer Tech Lead

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Position Summary

The FX Technology Squad is seeking a highly experienced Principal Platform Engineer / Technical Lead to provide technical leadership across our Foreign Exchange (FX) platforms and integrations. This role serves as the senior-most hands-on engineer within the squad, responsible for driving technical strategy, architecture, platform stability, operational excellence, and engineering best practices.

The Principal Platform Engineer will partner closely with Product Owners, Business Stakeholders, Architecture, Information Security, Infrastructure, Vendors, and Engineering Leadership to deliver highly available, scalable, and resilient solutions supporting mission-critical FX trading operations.

This individual is expected to be both a strategic technology leader and a hands-on technical expert who owns the full lifecycle of squad-supported applications from design through production support. The role will play a key leadership position in platform modernization initiatives, vendor integrations, cloud adoption, automation efforts, and reduction of operational risk.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Strategy

• Establish and communicate the technical vision for FX technology platforms.

• Lead architecture and design decisions across trading, pricing, execution, settlement, and downstream integrations.

• Partner with Enterprise Architects to ensure alignment with organizational technology standards.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to improve scalability, resiliency, automation, and developer productivity.

• Lead technology modernization initiatives and platform transformation efforts.

• Act as the primary technical escalation point for complex engineering and production issues.

Application Ownership

• Serve as the accountable technical owner for FX applications and services.

• Own the Design, Build, Run lifecycle of squad-supported platforms.

• Maintain application roadmaps and technical debt reduction plans.

• Ensure compliance with security, resiliency, audit, and regulatory requirements.

• Drive platform upgrades, infrastructure refreshes, and vendor software releases.

Operational Excellence

• Lead initiatives aimed at reducing production incidents and operational risk.

• Establish engineering practices that improve system reliability and observability.

• Drive measurable improvements in platform availability, Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), incident reduction, release success rates, and service-level adherence.

• Lead root cause analysis efforts and drive permanent corrective actions.

• Implement automation to eliminate manual operational processes and support activities.

Engineering Leadership 

• Set engineering standards and best practices across the squad.

• Conduct design reviews, code reviews, and architecture reviews.

• Coach, mentor, and develop Platform Engineers across all experience levels.

• Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, learning, and continuous improvement.

• Provide technical guidance during planning, estimation, and execution activities.

Vendor & Product Partnership

• Serve as the primary technical contact for key vendor platforms.

• Manage technical relationships with third-party providers and support teams.

• Evaluate vendor roadmaps and influence product direction when appropriate.

• Coordinate issue resolution and platform enhancements with external partners.

Delivery & Execution

• Lead large-scale technical initiatives from concept through deployment.

• Ensure solutions are delivered with appropriate levels of resiliency, security, and performance.

• Identify delivery risks early and create mitigation strategies.

• Support Agile planning activities and provide technical leadership during PI planning and quarterly roadmap reviews.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.

• 10+ years of technology experience supporting complex enterprise platforms.

• 5+ years serving in a senior engineering, lead engineer, solution architect, or technical leadership role.

• Strong experience supporting mission-critical production systems.

• Experience with financial services, Capital Markets, Foreign Exchange, Treasury, or Trading technologies.

• Demonstrated experience leading architecture and engineering decisions across multiple applications and teams.

• Expertise in application support, release management, production stability, and operational excellence.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting Foreign Exchange (FX), Trading, Market Risk, Treasury, or Capital Markets platforms.

• Experience with platforms such as WallStreet Systems (WSS), Caplin, Aphelion or replacement FX platforms, Bloomberg integrations, and market data systems.

• Experience with cloud technologies and platform modernization efforts.

• Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Infrastructure as Code practices.

• Experience leveraging AI-enabled engineering tools to improve delivery and operational efficiency.

• Strong vendor management experience.

At Fifth Third, we understand the importance of recognizing our employees for the role they play in improving the lives of our customers, communities and each other. Our Total Rewards include comprehensive benefits and differentiated compensation offerings to give each employee the opportunity to be their best every day.

The base salary for this position is reflective of the range of salary levels for all roles within this pay grade across the U.S. Individual salaries within this range will vary based on factors such as role, relevant skillset, relevant experience, education and geographic location. In addition to the base salary, this role is eligible to participate in an incentive compensation plan, with any such payment based upon company, line of business and/or individual performance.

Our extensive benefits programs are designed to support the individual needs of our employees and their families, encompassing physical, financial, emotional and social well-being. You can learn more about those programs on our 53.com Careers page at: https://www.53.com/content/fifth-third/en/careers/benefits.html or by consulting with your talent acquisition partner. 

Attention search firms and staffing agencies: do not submit unsolicited resumes for this posting.  Fifth Third does not accept resumes from any agency that does not have an active agreement with Fifth Third.  Any unsolicited resumes – no matter how they are submitted – will be considered the property of Fifth Third and Fifth Third will not be responsible for any associated fee.

Fifth Third Bank, National Association is proud to have an engaged and inclusive culture and to promote and ensure equal employment opportunity in all employment decisions regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, veteran status or any other legally protected status.