Hybrid Staff Engineer – Java

at GEICO

• Job title: Staff Engineer – Java
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: $115,000 - $230,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Azure, Cloud, Docker, Java, Kafka, Kubernetes, Microservices, SDLC, Splunk, Spring, Spring Boot, SpringBoot
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Palo Alto, United States

About the role

• Staff Engineer providing technical leadership in enhancing customer experience through innovative technology solutions at GEICO. Collaborating cross-functionally to deliver high-quality products in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Provide influential technical leadership and guidance to engineering teams.
• Own complete solution across its entire life cycle.
• Proactively influence and collaboratively build vision with product managers, principal engineers, architects, team members, and customers to solve complex enterprise-class problems, demonstrating clear, concise communication and active listening.
• Be accountable for the quality, usability, and performance of the solutions.
• Lead impactful architectural design discussions and contribute to elevating the quality of engineering through active participation in peer review requests across the organization.
• Utilize programming languages like Java, and open-source frameworks (e.g., Spring Boot), Container Orchestration services including Docker and Kubernetes, Kafka, and a variety of Azure tools and services including Azure Boards and Azure AppInsights, alongside cloud data platforms like Snowflake.
• Mentor more junior team members professionally to help them realize their full potential.
• Consistently share best practices and drive improvements within and across teams, fostering curiosity and innovation to advance our technology and processes.
• Drive digital transformation initiatives, including modernizing and migrating legacy applications.

Requirements

• Fluency and Specialization with Java and at least one other modern language (e.g., C++, C#) including object-oriented design.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly, concisely, and directly, both verbally and in writing.
• Proven ability to provide independent technical leadership and mentor engineers with significant depth.
• Deep architectural maturity, capable of fostering and driving broader organizational influence through technical vision.
• Expertise in complex problem-solving autonomy, particularly in troubleshooting critical production issues and devising creative, scalable technical solutions.
• Experience in building products using microservices-oriented architecture and extensible REST APIs.
• Experience building the architecture and design (architecture, design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of new and current systems, with a proven ability to think strategically and take a holistic, cross-domain view on system design.
• Extensive experience collaborating with architects and other technical leaders to shape engineering strategy and solutions.
• Fluency in DevOps Concepts, Cloud Architecture, and Azure DevOps Operational Framework, including continuous delivery and infrastructure as code.
• Experience with various operational tools and platforms, including Azure Portal, Azure Boards, and SonarQube.
• Familiarity with and experience applying Agile/Scrum methodologies.
• Strong understanding and practical experience with application monitoring, performance assessments, and observability practices, leveraging tools such as Azure AppInsights, Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace, or Splunk.
• In-depth understanding of cloud infrastructure concepts and offerings, particularly within the Azure platform and its native services.
• Experience in security protocols and products: Understanding of Active Directory, Windows Authentication, SAML, and other secure authentication/authorization mechanisms.
• In-depth knowledge of computer science data structures and algorithms.
• Ability to excel in a fast-paced, startup-like environment.
• Knowledge of developer tooling across the software development life cycle (task management, source code, building, deployment, operations, real-time communication), including familiarity with tools like webhook, Kafka, API Curio, Snowflake, and IBM FileNet P8.
• Demonstrated experience driving digital transformation, including successfully migrating or modernizing complex legacy applications.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Total Rewards program that offers personalized coverage tailor-made for you and your family’s overall well-being.
• Financial benefits including market-competitive compensation; a 401K savings plan vested from day one that offers a 6% match; performance and recognition-based incentives; and tuition assistance.
• Access to additional benefits like mental healthcare as well as fertility and adoption assistance.
• Supports flexibility- We provide workplace flexibility as well as our GEICO Flex program, which offers the ability to work from anywhere in the US for up to four weeks per year.