Lead Software Engineer in Abingdon

We are building the next generation of intelligent, cloud-native systems - and we want you to help lead the way. At JPMorganChase, you'll work at the intersection of software engineering, artificial intelligence, and cloud infrastructure, delivering solutions that matter at scale. This is an opportunity to grow your craft, shape engineering standards, and make a measurable impact on how the firm builds and operates technology.

As a Lead Software Engineer at JPMorganChase, you will own the delivery of complex, AI-powered software initiatives from discovery through production with minimal supervision. You will design and build intelligent systems leveraging large language models and agentic approaches, expose capabilities through well-designed APIs and microservices, and operate confidently across a multi-cloud environment - ensuring portability, security, and reliability at every layer.

Job responsibilities

• Lead initiatives end-to-end - from requirements clarification and architecture through implementation, testing, release, and production support - with strong ownership and minimal supervision.
• Design and implement AI solutions using large language models and modern agent patterns, including prompting strategies, tool/function calling, retrieval patterns, routing, and memory/state management where applicable.
• Build guardrails, evaluation frameworks, monitoring pipelines, and cost/latency optimizations for production LLM-based systems.
• Design, build, and operate REST and gRPC APIs and microservices, defining clear contracts using OpenAPI and Protobuf while ensuring backward compatibility, authentication, rate limiting, and observability.
• Apply resilience engineering patterns - including timeouts, retries, and circuit breakers - to ensure reliable, production-grade service behavior.
• Build and maintain well-tested, maintainable Python services and automation with clear packaging, dependency management, and architectural standards.
• Own data design and implementation, including schema design, data access patterns, and complex SQL optimization aligned to performance and reliability requirements.
• Build and manage infrastructure as code using Terraform, supporting containerized deployments via Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines across multi-cloud environments.
• Drive engineering excellence across code quality, testing strategy, performance, reliability, and operational rigor, including leading root-cause analysis for complex production issues.
• Mentor engineers, provide technical guidance, and establish standards for delivery and engineering practices across the team.
• Drive team adoption of enterprise-authorized AI-assisted engineering practices within the work environment to improve code quality, delivery speed, and operational outcomes.
• Apply knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI-assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automations.

Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Formal training or certification on software engineering concepts and advanced applied experience.
• Proven track record leading software delivery end-to-end with strong ownership and the ability to execute independently across the full development lifecycle.
• Strong Python software engineering skills for building production-grade services and automation, with solid testing, packaging, and maintainability practices.
• Strong understanding of relational databases and SQL, including schema design, query optimization, indexing, and transaction management.
• Demonstrated experience building AI solutions using large language models in production environments, including quality assurance, safety controls, evaluation, observability, and cost management.
• Strong API and microservices engineering experience, including service design, contract definition, security patterns, performance tuning, and distributed system observability.
• Hands-on multi-cloud experience (AWS preferred) with strong distributed systems fundamentals and a portability-minded approach to design.
• Strong Terraform skills for infrastructure-as-code, module design, environment management, and remote state handling.
• Working knowledge of DevOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, Git-based workflows, and Kubernetes deployments.
• Hands-on experience using enterprise-authorized AI-assisted software development tools within the work environment.
• Understanding of responsible AI use in engineering workflows, including data sensitivity considerations, secure handling of inputs/outputs, and adherence to resiliency and security expectations.

Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Experience designing and building agentic architectures, including tool use, planning and execution loops, and multi-step workflow orchestration.
• Experience building reusable internal libraries or frameworks that accelerate team delivery and promote engineering consistency.
• Familiarity with advanced LLM evaluation techniques, including automated benchmarking, red-teaming, and latency/cost profiling in production.
• Experience with gRPC and Protobuf-based service design in distributed, high-throughput environments.
• Exposure to platform or developer experience engineering, including internal tooling, shared infrastructure patterns, or delivery enablement frameworks.

J.P. Morgan is a global leader in financial services, providing strategic advice and products to the world's most prominent corporations, governments, wealthy individuals and institutional investors. Our first-class business in a first-class way approach to serving clients drives everything we do. We strive to build trusted, long-term partnerships to help our clients achieve their business objectives.

We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law.

We also make reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs.

Our professionals in our Corporate Functions cover a diverse range of areas from finance and risk to human resources and marketing. Our corporate teams are an essential part of our company, ensuring that we're setting our businesses, clients, customers and employees up for success.