Generative AI, Backend Engineer

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities. This is a Generative AI, Backend Engineering position at the Vice President level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs. Morgan Stanley is an industry leader in financial services, known for mobilizing capital to help governments, corporations, institutions, and individuals around the world achieve their financial goals. Interested in joining a team that’s eager to create, innovate and make an impact on the world? Read on. We are seeking an experienced and hands-on engineering leader to design, build, and deliver scalable, production-grade platforms and applications, including the next generation of Generative AI-powered solutions. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in one or both of two areas: backend/distributed systems engineering and Generative AI engineering. We are equally interested in strong backend engineers who have built complex, large-scale production systems and are excited to apply their expertise to Generative AI, as well as experienced AI engineers who bring strong software engineering fundamentals and have successfully built and operated distributed systems in production. This role is ideal for a technical leader who enjoys solving complex engineering problems, remains hands-on with technology, and can take systems from architecture and implementation through production deployment and operation. You will work closely with business and technology partners to deliver highly scalable, reliable, and intelligent products in a fast-paced investment banking environment. What you’ll do in the role: Lead the end-to-end design, development, and delivery of scalable backend and Generative AI solutions from concept through production deployment. Architect secure, resilient, high-performance distributed systems and services supporting enterprise applications and AI-powered capabilities. Design and build backend services, APIs, data and orchestration layers, and platforms that can reliably support Generative AI applications at enterprise scale. Provide hands-on technical leadership during architecture, solution design, implementation, code reviews, troubleshooting, and production support. Drive technical decision-making to ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable, performant, and aligned with enterprise engineering standards. Integrate Generative AI capabilities including Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), intelligent agents, and related technologies into production applications where appropriate. Collaborate closely with product owners, business stakeholders, architects, AI engineers, and engineering teams to translate business requirements into high-quality technical solutions. Lead technical planning, estimation, execution, and delivery across multiple concurrent initiatives. Ensure systems are production-ready with appropriate monitoring, observability, testing, security, resiliency, performance, and operational support. Drive engineering best practices including CI/CD, automated testing, code quality, infrastructure automation, and, where applicable, MLOps. Evaluate emerging technologies across Generative AI and software engineering and recommend practical adoption where they improve products, delivery, or engineering productivity. Mentor engineers and promote engineering excellence through technical guidance, architecture and design reviews, code reviews, and knowledge sharing. What you’ll bring to the role: 10+ years of software engineering experience designing, developing, and delivering complex production-grade systems in enterprise environments. Proven experience leading or collaborating with engineering teams and delivering complex technology initiatives in large enterprise environments. Strong hands-on software engineering and system design skills, with demonstrated experience building scalable, resilient, and highly available production systems. Strong programming skills in Python, Java, or another enterprise programming language, with the ability and willingness to work across technologies as needed. Strong experience developing distributed systems using technologies and patterns such as microservices, REST APIs, event-driven architectures, containerization, caching, messaging, and cloud-native architectures. Demonstrated experience taking complex systems into production, including scalability, resiliency, performance optimization, monitoring, observability, testing, security, and operational support. Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, code quality, infrastructure automation, and DevOps. Excellent communication skills with the ability to lead technical discussions and collaborate effectively across engineering, architecture, product, and business teams. Experience working in Agile software development environments. Experience with Generative AI/ML technologies or demonstrated interest and ability to develop expertise in building production-grade Generative AI systems. Generative AI / AI Engineering Experience Experience in one or more of the following is highly desirable, particularly for candidates coming from an AI engineering background: Building production-grade Generative AI or machine learning applications. Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, and model integration. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, and enterprise search/retrieval architectures. Agentic architectures, intelligent agents, tool/function calling, and workflow orchestration. OpenAI, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar AI platforms and frameworks. AI evaluation, monitoring, guardrails, and production observability. MLOps, model serving, or AI platform engineering. Building AI copilots, workflow automation, or agentic AI applications. Deep prior AI/ML expertise is not required for candidates who demonstrate exceptional backend, distributed systems, and production engineering experience together with the ability and interest to develop expertise in Generative AI. For candidates coming primarily from an AI engineering background, we are looking for demonstrated strength in software engineering, distributed systems, and operating applications in production, beyond prototyping and experimentation. Preferred Qualifications: Experience within Investment Banking, Capital Markets, or Financial Services technology. Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar DevOps tooling. Experience with MLflow or other MLOps platforms and practices. Familiarity with cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. Experience designing high-throughput, low-latency, or highly available distributed systems. Experience building platforms, frameworks, or shared services used by multiple engineering teams. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY: At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering