Senior AI Software Engineer

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities. This is a Software Engineering III position at the Director level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs.

Morgan Stanley is an industry leader in financial services, known for mobilizing capital to help governments, corporations, institutions, and individuals around the world achieve their financial goals.

Interested in joining a team that’s eager to create, innovate and make an impact on the world? Read on.

Role Summary

We are looking for a Senior AI Software Engineer with 7 to 10 years of experience to help maintain, modernize, and enhance business-critical technology platforms supporting equity derivatives, structured-products pricing, trading workflows, external connectivity, and front-office operations.

The role is primarily focused on backend Java/Spring engineering, with meaningful exposure to distributed service integration, pricing and quote workflows, databases, observability, CI/CD, and selective full-stack work across modern Angular/TypeScript and Python-based platform libraries.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on senior engineer who can understand complex production systems, support pricing and trading workflows, modernize legacy components safely, and partner closely with trading, sales, quantitative, operations, and technology stakeholders.

We are also looking for someone who can use AI-assisted engineering tools pragmatically to improve code comprehension, test generation, debugging, refactoring, documentation, and operational support while maintaining strong engineering judgment, code quality, and production discipline.

What you’ll do in the role:

• Build, maintain, and enhance Java/Spring services supporting equity derivatives pricing, quote lifecycle, workflow management, trading connectivity, and downstream platform integration.

• Support RFQ, quote lifecycle, valuation, product setup/defaulting logic, pricing gateway flows, external connectivity, booking/order workflows, and downstream consumers.

• Integrate with internal and external systems using REST/OpenAPI-first patterns, event-driven messaging, WebSocket, SOAP/WSDL where needed, and enterprise authentication/authorization mechanisms.

• Support trading-connectivity workflows involving external platforms, pricing requests, quote distribution, workflow state, data transformation, and downstream consumption.

• Work with SQL databases, stored procedures, schema migrations, JDBC/JPA/Hibernate, cache layers, and document or NoSQL-backed services where needed.

• Support selective Angular/TypeScript changes for front-office workflow applications, including forms, grids, quote workflows, entitlements, and UI regression testing.

• Build and maintain automated tests across backend and UI workflows, including unit tests, integration tests, contract tests, and Playwright-based end-to-end tests where appropriate.

• Support and improve production readiness through observability, health checks, metrics, logging, tracing, deployment configuration, CI/CD pipelines, contract testing, and regression suites.

• Investigate and resolve production issues across APIs, services, data flows, messaging layers, authentication, pricing workflows, connectivity, and UI-adjacent components.

• Modernize legacy components incrementally while preserving production stability and minimizing business disruption.

• Identify opportunities to automate manual support, workflow validation, regression checks, monitoring, reporting, and operational handoffs.

• Use AI-assisted engineering tools to accelerate code comprehension, refactoring, test generation, debugging, documentation, regression analysis, and support automation.

• Partner closely with trading, sales, quantitative, operations, and technology teams to clarify requirements, troubleshoot issues, and deliver practical enhancements.

• Participate in design discussions, code reviews, testing, release readiness, production support, and modernization efforts.

What you’ll bring to the role:

• 7 + years of professional software engineering experience in enterprise, financial technology, or other production-critical environments.

• Strong Java backend engineering background, ideally across Java 8/11/17 and Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Web, or equivalent enterprise Java frameworks.

• Experience building and maintaining multi-module backend services using Gradle, Maven, or comparable enterprise build systems.

• Strong understanding of distributed service integration, including REST APIs, OpenAPI, messaging, retries, resilience patterns, authentication/authorization, and service discovery.

• Experience maintaining systems with multiple upstream and downstream dependencies.

• Comfortable with SQL, schema migrations, stored procedures, JDBC/JPA/Hibernate, and production data troubleshooting.

• Testing discipline using JUnit, Mockito, integration tests, contract tests, WireMock, Testcontainers, Playwright, or comparable tools.

• Experience supporting production systems using logs, metrics, health checks, CI/CD pipelines, deployment configuration, rollback processes, and debugging workflows.

• Ability to troubleshoot issues across services, APIs, data flows, batch processes, messaging layers, UI-facing workflows, and downstream consumers.

• Comfortable working with legacy codebases while incrementally improving reliability, testability, and maintainability.

• Ability to work independently across ambiguous systems, clarify ownership, break down problems, and drive issues to closure.

• Strong communication skills with business users, operations partners, quantitative teams, and cross-functional technology teams.

Preferred Skills

• Structured-products, equity derivatives, or trading-domain knowledge, including RFQ, pricing, valuation, quotes, greeks, underliers, product templates, order flow, booking, lifecycle events, or risk/pricing contexts.

• REST/OpenAPI-based trading-connectivity experience, including external platform integrations, request/response workflows, asynchronous messaging, retries, idempotency, entitlement checks, and failure handling.

• Experience with event-driven or messaging technologies such as Kafka, Kafka Streams, JMS/MQ, or comparable messaging platforms.

• Exposure to FIX or similar legacy trading protocols is useful, but not required.

• Experience with pricing services, trading workflow platforms, front-office workflow tooling, quote lifecycle systems, or external trading platform integrations.

• Angular/TypeScript experience with modern Angular versions, RxJS, state management frameworks, grid components, SCSS, Playwright, Jest, Jasmine/Karma, or similar UI testing frameworks.

• Python service or library experience, including Python 3.x, FastAPI, Pydantic, pytest, ruff/mypy, Hatch, httpx, Mongo or document databases, API integrations, or OpenTelemetry.

• Experience with observability and operational tooling such as OpenTelemetry, Micrometer, AppDynamics, structured logging, dashboards, alerts, and health checks.

• Familiarity with enterprise deployment and build platforms, CI/CD, artifact management, controlled release processes, and production support practices.

• Practical experience using AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, LLM-based code analysis, automated test generation, documentation generation, debugging support, or developer workflow automation.

• Interest in applying AI and automation to improve productivity in large, complex enterprise codebases.

Success Measures

• Improved stability, maintainability, and supportability of pricing, trading workflow, connectivity, and platform services.

• Faster and safer delivery through stronger automated testing, regression coverage, contract testing, and release discipline.

• Reduced manual support effort through better diagnostics, automation, observability, and operational tooling.

• Improved ability to troubleshoot pricing, quoting, connectivity, booking, and downstream workflow issues

• Strong partnership with trading, sales, quantitative, operations, and technology stakeholders.

• Effective use of AI-assisted engineering to improve code comprehension, testing, documentation, debugging, and modernization.

• Incremental modernization of legacy components without compromising production stability or business workflow continuity.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a pragmatic senior Java/Spring engineer who can operate across business-critical trading, pricing, and connectivity platforms. They should be comfortable working with complex legacy and modern systems, distributed service integrations, production support, data troubleshooting, and incremental modernization.

This person does not need to be a frontend-first or Python-first engineer, but should be comfortable making selective Angular/TypeScript changes and ramping into Python-based libraries or services where needed. The strongest fit is backend-heavy, production-minded, and curious enough to learn the structured-products and equity derivatives domain.

They should be hands-on, disciplined about testing, thoughtful about production risk, and able to work closely with front-office and technology stakeholders. Over time, they should be able to break down ambiguous asks, clarify ownership, drive changes forward, and use AI-assisted engineering tools to improve both individual productivity and platform quality.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY:

At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years.  Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There’s also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.

To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices​ into your browser.

Expected base pay rates for the role will be between $120,000 and $170,000 per year at the commencement of employment.  However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.

Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background.  Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents.

Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences.

For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.