Application Engineering Technical Lead - II

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's India Office

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 expert-level IT technical lead services, including the integration and implementation of technologies, while applying deep backend expertise to optimize performance, ensure secure architecture, and enhance system scalability.

Core Responsibilities

• Writes ETL (Extract / Transform / Load) processes, designs database systems and, develops tools for real-time and offline analytic processing.
• Troubleshoots software and processes for data consistency and integrity. Integrates complex and large-scale data from a variety of sources for business partners to generate insight and make decisions.
• Translates business specifications into design specifications and code. Responsible for writing complex programs, ad hoc queries, and reports. Ensures that all code is well structured, includes sufficient documentation, and is easy to maintain and reuse.
• Partners with internal clients to gain an expert understanding of business functions and informational needs. Works closely with other technical and data analytics experts across the business to implement data solutions.
• Leads all phases of solution development. Explains technical considerations at related meetings, including those with internal clients and less experienced team members.
• Assesses data quality and tests code thoroughly for accuracy of intended purpose. Provides data analysis guidance and serves as a technical consultant for the client.
• Educates and develops junior data engineers on the team while applying quality control to their work. Develops data engineering standards and contributes expertise to other data expert teams across Vanguard.
• Tests and implements new software releases through regression testing. Identifies issues and engages with vendors to resolve and elevate software into production.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

• Minimum 8 years of experience in software development, architecture, and system integration.
• Bachelor's degree (B.E./B.Tech) in Computer Science or IT, or Bachelor's in Computer Applications (BCA), or Master's in Computer Applications (MCA).
• Strong hands-on experience in data engineering, with the ability to design and build scalable data solutions end-to-end
• Proven expertise in AWS ecosystem, including services such as Glue, S3, and exposure to broader cloud-native architectures
• Strong programming experience in Python / PySpark, with hands-on exposure to building data pipelines
• Solid experience in data pipeline design, development, and optimization, ensuring scalability, reliability, and reusability
• Ability to take technical ownership, drive solution design, and translate business requirements into robust technical solutions
• Nice to Have:
• Exposure to Databricks or modern data platform ecosystems; familiarity with Lakehouse architecture is a plus
• Understanding of ML/data pipelines and their integration into enterprise data platforms