Senior Manager, Application Engineering

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 leads, directs, and manages the development of teams and provides expert-level software and application development services across multiple teams, while driving backend optimization, scalability, and secure data integration.

Responsibilities

1. Hires, evaluates, and supervises crew. Guides performance management, training, and compensation decisions per HR policies.
2. Partners with product and functional leads to ensure current and future staffing needs are met, maintaining a balanced and skilled development workforce.
3. Oversees software development and architecture design for product families. Leads complex technical development, design, and maintenance activities.
4. Provides strategic direction by identifying and implementing technical solutions. Resolves complex issues and aligns strategies across product families.
5. Drives capability-building initiatives across teams and functions, fostering key stakeholder relationships and talent development.
6. Oversees functional area standards, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy. Manages budgets and change request impacts.
7. Participates in divisional leadership, contributing to IT planning and strategy. Resolves escalated issues and drives continuous process improvements.
8. Tracks industry trends and implements relevant innovations, tools, and best practices across the functional area.
9. Oversees the creation and quality of development outputs such as code, test artifacts, and implementation reports.
10. Leads initiatives to optimize system performance, backend scalability, and secure data integration.
11. Guides technical teams in ensuring reliable backend services and seamless front-end collaboration.
12. Participates in special projects and fulfills other assigned duties.

Qualifications & Skills

• Minimum 12 years of relevant work experience, with at least 5 years in a leadership or managerial role.
• Bachelor's or Master's (preferred) degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field with relevant certifications (e.g., AWS, Azure, Scrum, or PMP).
• Leadership of leaders (scaling teams, not individual contribution).
• Ability to scale organizations (multiple teams / ~20 teams over time).
• Strong people management and organizational design skills.
• Technical depth (Java-based ecosystem) without hands-on coding expectation.
• Ability to understand code quality, coverage, and architecture decisions.
• Experience working with modern engineering stacks (Java, Node.js, React - flexible).
• Cloud technology familiarity (AWS preferred, others acceptable).
• Strong decision-making and accountability at senior levels.
• Cross-functional collaboration (engineering, product, stakeholders).
• Talent attraction and team-building capability.
• Strategic thinking and long-term execution mindset.
• Navigating enterprise standards (security, scalability, reliability).
• Cultural fit and values alignment (trust, integrity, mission-driven).
• Effective communication with US and India stakeholders.

Location

This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard's India office. 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.