Application Engineer - III
Vanguard · Hyderabad, India · 3d ago
About Vanguard
Founded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe—directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries.
Vanguard India
Vanguard’s office in India is a significant milestone in our global expansion. We are committed to establishing an enduring technology center in Hyderabad, Telangana and are excited to be adding talent who will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile, and cloud-based technologies that drive our business outcomes and deliver a world-class experience for our clients.
Role Summary
This role provides advanced-level system analysis, design, development, and implementation of applications and databases under general direction, and leads backend optimization, data integration, documentation, and secure, scalable architecture aligned with enterprise standards.
About Team and Role:
We are looking for an experienced Server-Side Python/AWS Developer to join a Full-Stack team embracing New Ways of Working (NWoW) in Vanguard’s Global Investments Financial Systems (GIFS) division.
We are rapidly expanding our technology presence in India, so this is an exciting opportunity to join the team, contribute to delivery, build technical depth, and gain exposure to the Investment Management apparatus at Vanguard.
This team builds and supports the technology platforms that enable Vanguard’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data capabilities. The team acquires, manages, enriches and distributes ESG data across the firm. This includes building data ingestion pipelines, APIs, cloud-based data services and workflow capabilities that help ensure ESG data is accurate, secure, well-governed and readily accessible to downstream consumers.
This role focuses on building event-driven, cloud-native systems using Python and AWS, with particular emphasis on Amazon S3 (including Access Points) and DynamoDB, and orchestration via AWS Lambda, Step Functions, and ECS. The team uses agile methodologies and operates a continuous delivery pipeline.
Good hands-on experience implementing Python-based services in a production environment is required. Practical knowledge of AWS or other cloud provider core services is expected.
The successful candidate will be a motivated developer with strong problem-solving skills, a commitment to quality, and good documentation and testing habits. This role requires strong communication and collaboration skills, as well as a proactive mindset—including asking clarifying questions, identifying edge cases, and surfacing risks early.
The role includes daily interaction with business partners and product managers, making effective written and verbal communication essential.
Join us and help us innovate for client success!
In this developer role, you will:
Collaborate closely with business users, product managers, and engineering partners - actively asking questions and clarifying requirements to ensure high-quality outcomes.
Build and maintain Python-based services on AWS, using event-driven patterns tied to S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, Step Functions, and ECS.
Contribute to data architecture and implementation decisions, including:
S3 buckets and Access Points
Bucket/object modelling and partitioning
DynamoDB and NoSQL data modelling
REST / GraphQL APIs
Encryption/KMS policies
Performance and scalability considerations
Integrate S3 and DynamoDB with event-driven compute (Lambda), orchestrated workflows (Step Functions), and container workloads (ECS).
Support end-to-end testing for event-driven systems, including integration testing, schema validation, replay/idempotency scenarios, and testing across AWS services.
Work with Avro for data serialization, including schema usage, schema evolution concepts, and Python libraries such as fastavro or avro.
Maintain good engineering practices through clean code, code reviews, documentation, observability, resilience, and operational readiness.
Provide 3rd-line support as needed and contribute to continuous improvement.
What it takes:
Technical Expertise
Minimum 5 years of experience in software development, system integration, database design, and back-end architecture.
Bachelor’s degree (B.E./B.Tech) in relevant fields such as Computer Science, or a Master’s degree/Diploma in Computer Science.
Python development experience, including:
Object-oriented programming
Type hints and static analysis
Packaging, virtual environments, and dependency management
Concurrency (multiprocessing)
Testing experience using pytest, unittest, and related frameworks
Hands-on experience with Amazon S3, including:
S3 Access Points and fine-grained IAM controls
Lifecycle rules, storage classes, multipart uploads
Experience working with NoSQL databases such as:
DynamoDB in AWS
Experience with:
AWS Lambda (serverless patterns, event integration, concurrency & retries)
AWS Step Functions (workflow orchestration, error handling, compensating flows)
Amazon ECS (task definitions, service scaling, container orchestration)
End-to-end testing experience for event-driven architectures:
Contract testing and integration testing concepts
Avro schema validation and compatibility testing
Integration tests across S3 → Lambda → Step Functions → ECS pipelines
Monitoring and observability validation
Experience working with Avro:
Understanding of schema design and evolution strategies
Efficient read/write using fastavro, etc.
Handling large datasets and streaming workflows
Experience with:
Experience with cloud-native CI/CD, logging, and monitoring tools (Git/Bitbucket, CloudWatch, Splunk, etc.)
Ways of Working
Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to a range of stakeholders.
Proactive mindset: asks questions, uncovers assumptions, proposes solutions early, and takes initiative.
Ability to work under pressure, prioritise effectively, and meet tight deadlines.
Familiarity with agile practices and tools such as JIRA and Confluence.
Location
This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard India. Only qualified external applicants will be considered.
Our mission
Vanguard adheres to a simple purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.
Our commitment to you
Vanguard takes the same long-term view of your success—at work and in life—with Benefits and Rewards packages that reflect what you care about, throughout all the phases and stages of your life. Our Total Rewards programs provide you and your loved ones with wellness support for key areas in your life:
Financial wellness
We're committed to enabling your financial success and provide competitive offers and programs.
Physical wellness
We're committed to providing benefits that support your physical health and wellness.
Personal wellness
We're committed to providing resources that help support the full scope of your life.
How we work
Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for most of our employees (crew members), designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.