Staff Software Engineer

Zinnia is the leading technology platform for accelerating life and annuities growth. With innovative enterprise solutions and data insights, Zinnia simplifies the experience of buying, selling, and administering insurance products. All of which enables more people to protect their financial futures. Our success is driven by a commitment to three core values: be bold, team up, deliver value and that we do. Zinnia has over $180 billion in assets under administration, serves 100+ carrier clients, 2500 distributors and partners, and over 2 million policyholders.

As a Staff Engineer, you will execute on our product vision for modern, frictionless, and scalable API-first systems, which collectively deliver the best end-to-end Life & Annuities solution in the industry. You will partner with fellow engineers to create a reusable, predictable, and discoverable design and development framework, enabling rapid, consistent, and maintainable solutions across the enterprise. We are seeking a team player with leadership experience, exceptional API security expertise, and a proven track record of successful delivery. You combine architectural vision with hands-on coding skills, ensuring solutions are both strategically sound and practically implemented.

• Architect and build: Design, document, and evangelize API standards and best practices across all Zinnia APIs.
• Hands-on coding: Write high-quality, maintainable, and performant code to build reusable frameworks and services.
• Lead API delivery: Partner with and guide the Enterprise API team to deliver scalable and highly performant enterprise-grade APIs.
• API governance: Implement API gateway capabilities (traceability, monitoring, security, analytics) and recommend improvements for the full API lifecycle.
• API documentation: Maintain high-quality API documentation using Swagger or similar tools to ensure clarity, consistency, and ease of use for internal and external consumers.
• Code quality: Conduct code reviews and ensure alignment with architectural principles, standards, and design patterns.
• Technical guidance: Make critical design decisions, provide architectural oversight, and mentor developers.
• Integration: Work with IAM solutions and cloud-native services to secure and scale APIs.
• Collaboration: Partner cross-functionally (product, security, DevOps, infra) to ensure API strategy aligns with enterprise goals.
• Innovation: Stay current with emerging technologies and bring ideas to improve scalability, performance, and developer experience.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• 10+ years of software development experience, with 4+ years in a staff engineer, architect, or technical lead role.
• Strong proficiency with .NET (C#) and JavaScript/TypeScript (NestJS, NextJS).
• Proven ability to architect large-scale API solutions while also contributing as a hands-on coder.
• Strong expertise in event-driven architecture and pub/sub messaging patterns, with experience in event streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka.
• Expertise in API management and gateway technologies (e.g., Apigee, Kong) and proven ability to integrate with enterprise IAM systems for secure API access.
• Experience designing and maintaining versioned, external/internal-facing APIs.
• Cloud-native development experience with AWS services such as Lambda, EC2, S3, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SNS/SQS, and RDS.
• Strong knowledge of relational databases (e.g., MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra).
• Working knowledge of DevOps practices (CI/CD pipelines, environment provisioning, monitoring) and containerization technologies such as Docker.
• Strong understanding of software design principles, patterns, and API governance.
• Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Excellent communication, critical thinking, and leadership skills with the ability to influence and mentor teams.
• Commitment to continuous learning and staying up to date with the latest technologies in software development.

• Experience with Java and related technologies.
• Knowledge of the Life Insurance & Annuities domain.

Zinnia offers excellent career progression and competitive compensation. We offer great benefits, including health/dental insurance, parental leave, profit sharing, 401(k), incentive/bonus opportunity, tuition reimbursement, and so much more. The expected salary range for this position is $175,000 to $190,000, dependent on skills and location. All offers presented to candidates are carefully reviewed to ensure fair, equitable pay by offering competitive salaries that align with the individual's skills, education, experience, training, and geographic location and may be above or below the stated amounts. We're looking for the best and brightest innovators in the industry to join our team. At Zinnia, you collaborate with smart, creative professionals who are dedicated to delivering cutting-edge technologies, deeper data insights, and enhanced services to transform how insurance is done.