Senior Distinguished Engineer

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses. Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment. Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship. Overall Purpose The Senior Distinguished Engineer – Cloud Services is the company’s foremost technical authority for enterprise cloud services and cloud-native platform capabilities. This leader is responsible for defining the strategy, architecture, engineering standards, and long-term technical direction for the managed services that application teams consume across the enterprise. Unlike traditional infrastructure engineering roles, this position focuses on the services built on top of the cloud foundation—not the underlying cloud infrastructure itself. The role drives simplification, standardization, automation, and self-service while enabling engineering teams to build secure, resilient, and scalable applications with minimal operational overhead. This individual partners closely with Cloud Infrastructure Engineering, Security, Platform Engineering, Architecture, and Product Engineering to ensure cloud services are delivered as reusable enterprise capabilities. This position functions as a strategic individual contributor expected to solve enterprise-wide engineering problems in a fast-paced and collaborative environment. Essential Functions: Serves as a recognized senior technical individual contributor supporting our most demanding, cross-functional projects across the pillar. A visionary leader, builder, and an operator. Drives best practices, architectures, and technology decisions inside the tech function (as applicable) and the organization Define the long-term technical vision for enterprise cloud services. Establish the cloud services roadmap aligned with business priorities. Evaluate emerging cloud capabilities and determine enterprise adoption strategies. Create service standards that balance developer experience, security, operational excellence, and cost. Provide technical leadership and strategic direction for the enterprise cloud services portfolio, including data, integration, platform, networking, security, observability, AI/ML, storage, and developer enablement services. Define and evolve enterprise reference architectures, engineering standards, and design patterns for cloud services. Drive standardization, rationalization, and adoption of enterprise cloud services to reduce complexity and maximize reuse across the organization. Lead the design of highly available, resilient, secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud service platforms. Champion Infrastructure as Code, automation, and platform engineering practices to simplify provisioning, lifecycle management, and operations. Develop reusable cloud service modules, reference implementations, and engineering patterns that accelerate solution delivery. Partner with application engineering teams to improve developer experience through self-service capabilities, standardized service offerings, golden paths, templates, SDKs, and technical guidance. Establish operational excellence standards for cloud services, including reliability, observability, performance, capacity planning, disaster recovery, incident reduction, and automated operations. Drive continuous improvement of cloud platforms through automation, operational telemetry, resilience engineering, and cost optimization. Establish enterprise governance for cloud services by defining technical standards, evaluating new technologies, approving service patterns, and rationalizing overlapping capabilities. Influence enterprise technology strategy and architecture decisions while balancing innovation, operational excellence, security, and long-term sustainability. Serve as the organization's highest-level technical authority for enterprise cloud services, providing mentorship, architectural guidance, and cross-functional technical leadership. Consults and collaborates closely with Engineering leaders, Architecture, Security, and potentially external collaboration partners (FIs) that may be engaged with us on key efforts over the years. Keeps executive-level leaders informed of progress and problems. Balances technical leadership and savvy with strong business judgment to make the right decisions about technology choices. Makes recommendations at a critical level. Complies with all security policies and procedures, to ensure that the highest level of system and data confidentiality, integrity and availability is maintained. Support the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data. The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow instructions and perform other related duties as assigned by their supervisor. Minimum Qualifications Education or experience typically obtained through completion of a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems, Information Technology, Information Systems, Computer Science or equivalent professional experience. Minimum 15 or more years of progressive software engineering experience; recognized as a technical expert with demonstrated experience mentoring and leading large-scale deliverables and processes in a Technology organization Minimum 5 or more years of software engineering experience dealing with large scale systems in the cloud. Minimum 5 or more years of experience implementing application solutions/ services in Cloud using Containerization, CI/CD, Automated testing and in compliance security guidelines. Recognized in the industry as a technical expert in their field through published works, patents and/or industry speaking engagements. Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership through large-scale system designs, upgrades, and releases. Demonstrated ability to mentor and energize people showcasing technical and leadership skills. Demonstrated experience with state- of- the- art technology, architecture, and design concepts, open-source operating systems, database systems, computer networking, and security. Possesses a deep understanding of executing highly scalable, distributed applications in cloud environments. Demonstrated ability to work effectively in cross-functional groups and generate results. Excellent interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills. Must convey responsiveness and competence when dealing with internal customers, staff, peers, senior management, and vendors. Superior leadership presence with strong business acumen. Background and drug screen Preferred Qualifications Master’s Degree; additional related education and/or related work experience preferred. Industry authored content around applicable area of expertise. Experience with large-scale enterprises scaling out operations in Amazon Web Services is highly favorable. Functionally decompose complex problems into simple, straight-forward solutions. Experience; with migrating application & data services from on-prem to Cloud. Deep hands-on technical expertise in at least one major technical area: large scale full stack development, building complex distributed systems, designing massive global networks. Success Measure: Increased adoption and consistent use of standardized enterprise cloud services. Improved developer productivity through intuitive self-service platform capabilities and reusable engineering patterns. Reduced operational complexity through standardization, automation, and technology rationalization. Increased platform reuse and reduced duplication of cloud services across the enterprise. Improved reliability, resilience, security, and operational maturity of enterprise cloud platforms. Accelerated delivery of business capabilities through modern platform engineering practices. Increased automation across cloud service provisioning, operations, and lifecycle management. Measurable improvements in cloud efficiency, scalability, and cost optimization. Establishment of enterprise cloud services as productized, reusable platforms that enable engineering teams to deliver solutions faster with less operational overhead. Physical Requirements Early Warning works together in a highly collaborative office environment. Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers. Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation. The base pay scale for this position in: Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $248,000 - $330,000. Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits. This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes. Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses. 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility. Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day. 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work. And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process! Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees. Early Warning Services LLC is a proud participant in E-Verify, a federal program to help ensure a legal and authorized workforce. As part of our hiring process, we electronically verify the employment eligibility of all new hires through E-Verify. For more information on your rights and responsibilities under E-Verify please visit Home | E-Verify. CURRENT EMPLOYEES: Apply for open positions via Job Hub in your Workday Account. Early Warning Services® delivers innovative payment and risk solutions to financial institutions nationwide. For over 25 years, Early Warning has been a leader in technology that helps protect and advance the financial system. We serve a diverse network of approximately 2,500 financial institutions, government entities and payment companies. Our product solutions enable real-time funds availability for a variety of payment types through our payments network. Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees. Early Warning Services® aims to make our recruitment process accessible to any and all users. If you have a disability or a special need that requires accommodation to navigate our website or complete the application process, please email View email address on click.appcast.io for an assistance request. View supplemental EEO is the law poster Early Warning has developed and maintains a written AAP and upholds pay transparency nondiscrimination. E-Verify Early Warning Services LLC is a proud participant in E-Verify, a federal program to help ensure a legal and authorized workforce. As part of our hiring process, we electronically verify the employment eligibility of all new hires through E-Verify. For more information on your rights and responsibilities under E-Verify please visit Home | E-Verify. Privacy Notice Effective: June 4, 2026 This privacy notice is intended to inform California residents of the personal information we collect, how it’s used and disclosed, and the rights you have in regard to such information. Click below for the full privacy notice