Senior Engineers - job 7 of 7

Senior Engineers at American Express are tasked with developing and designing software applications tailored to customer needs, translating these requirements into systems architecture, and assessing application performance and integration of component systems. They are key players in the engineering team, ensuring software resilience through thorough testing and employing user story analysis for continuous improvement.

To qualify for the Senior Engineer position at American Express, candidates should hold a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related STEM field. Additionally, candidates must have a minimum of 5 years of experience in platform engineering, architecture, and implementation, with demonstrable skills in Agile methodology, cloud services, and various coding languages and tools.

Candidates for the Senior Engineer position at American Express should possess strong technical expertise in several areas, including Agile development, Ansible/Terraform, AWS cloud administration, Linux, Python scripting, and experience with containerization platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes. Knowledge of database technologies like Couchbase DB and Postgres is also essential, alongside experience with CICD tools and monitoring solutions.

The work environment for Senior Engineers at American Express promotes innovation and collaboration. With the option of telecommuting up to two days a week, engineers can benefit from a balanced work-life approach while contributing to groundbreaking projects. The team culture is supportive, focusing on colleague development and well-being, outlined by excellent benefits.

Senior Engineers at American Express enjoy a comprehensive benefits package, including competitive salaries, bonus incentives, extensive health coverage, a generous retirement savings plan with company matching, parental leave, wellness programs, and a commitment to colleagues’ career development through training opportunities.

When answering this question, highlight specific projects where you applied Agile principles. Discuss your role in sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and reviews, and emphasize how Agile helped improve project outcomes or team collaboration.

You can approach this question by discussing testing methodologies like unit testing, integration testing, and load testing. Explain how you validate performance and incorporate feedback loops to enhance the resilience of the software.

Mention specific tools like Docker or Kubernetes that you've utilized. Discuss how these tools facilitated your development process, streamlined deployments, and improved the consistency of software environments.

Select a specific project where you faced significant challenges. Detail the strategies you employed to solve them, such as stakeholder communication, changes in strategy, or leveraging team strengths.

Discuss your methods for gathering user requirements, such as interviews or surveys, and how you prioritize these stories in the development backlog. Explain how you work with the team to refine and break down user stories into actionable tasks.

Talk about your commitment to learning and adapting. Discuss your use of feedback loops, retrospectives, and updated coding practices that enable continuous improvement across projects and teams.

Share your experience using collaboration tools such as Slack or Jira, emphasizing clear communication, regular check-ins, and structured workflows as vital components for successful remote teamwork.

Detail your experience with AWS, discussing specific services you’ve used like EC2, S3, or RDS. Emphasize how leveraging cloud services has improved deployment and scalability in projects you have worked on.

Talk about your approach to providing feedback during code reviews, focusing on positive reinforcement and suggestions for improvement. Discuss how you ensure a culture that values learning and supports team development.

Emphasize the importance of monitoring for performance and reliability. Discuss tools you've used, like ElasticSearch or Grafana, and how they assist in early issue detection and maintaining software solidity.