AVP, Principal API Engineer - Digital (L11)

Job Description: Role Title: AVP, Principal API Engineer - Digital (L11) Company Overview: Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a leading consumer financing company that has been at the heart of American commerce and opportunity for nearly a century. Synchrony delivers credit and banking products that empower tens of millions of consumers to improve their financial lives and access what matters most. Leveraging innovative solutions that are shaping the future of retail commerce, Synchrony supports the growth and success of some of the nation’s most respected brands, alongside hundreds of thousands of small and midsize businesses, including health and wellness providers. Committed to excellence in service and culture, Synchrony is proud to be named as #3 as a Great Place to Work® in India and is honored to be ranked the #1 Best Company to Work For® in the U.S. by Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work®. For more information, visit www.synchrony.com. Organizational Overview: Synchrony’s  Treasury Engineering Team  is a dynamic and innovative group focused on delivering technology solutions that support critical financial operations at scale. As part of this team, you will help design, build, and modernize platforms that enable secure, reliable, and efficient treasury capabilities across the enterprise. Treasury Engineering supports complex financial processes that may appear simple to customers and business users, but operate behind the scenes with significant scale, precision, and resilience. From managing high-volume payment flows to enabling accurate funding, reconciliation, liquidity, and settlement processes, our systems help ensure transactions move smoothly and reliably around the clock. The team leverages modern engineering practices, automation, cloud-native technologies, data-driven insights, and resilient architecture to manage the continuous flow of financial information across millions of accounts and transactions. Our work is essential to maintaining operational excellence, improving efficiency, and supporting Synchrony’s broader financial ecosystem. We foster a collaborative environment where engineers are encouraged to solve complex problems, innovate, and grow their careers. If you are passionate about building scalable financial technology, driving automation, and shaping the future of treasury platforms, Synchrony’s Treasury Engineering Team is the place to be. Role Summary/Purpose: We are looking for a hands-on  Principal Engineer / Tech Lead  who can both build and guide the delivery of  production-grade agentic AI and cloud-native applications . This role is focused on treating AI agents and intelligent services as  enterprise software systems —engineered with strong architecture, reliability, security, scalability, and operational readiness—not as isolated prompt experiments. This person will own the engineering quality bar for 1–2 delivery teams, driving excellence across  cloud engineering practices, distributed system design, Java and Python development, Spring Boot services, Kafka-based event architectures, testing, evaluations, CI/CD, observability, and on-call readiness . They are expected to write code approximately 60% of the time while leading design reviews, mentoring engineers, establishing patterns, and ensuring delivery teams build solutions that are resilient, maintainable, and production-ready. The ideal candidate brings strong  design thinking  skills—able to translate business problems into scalable technical solutions, balance user needs with engineering constraints, and guide teams through iterative discovery, prototyping, validation, and delivery. Key Responsibilities: Lead the design and delivery of production-grade agentic AI and cloud-native applications, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, maintainability, and operational readiness. Own the engineering quality bar for 1–2 teams by setting standards for architecture, code quality, testing, CI/CD, observability, runbooks, and on-call readiness. Write hands-on production code using Java, Spring Boot, Python, Kafka, APIs, and cloud-native design patterns , while mentoring engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and pairing. Apply design thinking to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions, guiding discovery, prototyping, validation, and iterative delivery. Integrate with enterprise platform capabilities such as model gateways, tool/service registries, memory stores, guardrails, identity services, evaluation frameworks, and operational controls while aligning with enterprise architecture and governance standards. Required Skills/Knowledge : Minimum 8+ years of experience building  cloud-native, production-grade applications  using  Java, Spring Boot, Python, REST APIs, microservices, Kafka, and event-driven architecture . Minimum 8+ years of understanding of  distributed systems, scalability, resiliency, security, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, logging, metrics, tracing, and on-call readiness . Experience engineering  agentic AI applications  with tool integration, memory, guardrails, evaluations, identity, governance, and production operational controls. Strong technical leadership and design thinking skills, with the ability to guide architecture, mentor engineers, collaborate across teams, and translate business needs into scalable solutions. Knowledge of  U.S. payment processing with ACH / Wires  is a plus. ​ Desired Skills/Knowledge : Proven experience as a  Principal Engineer, Tech Lead, or Senior Engineering Leader  guiding teams in building enterprise-scale, cloud-native and AI-enabled applications. Strong hands-on expertise in  Java, Spring Boot, Python, Kafka, microservices, APIs, and distributed system design patterns . Experience with  agentic AI platforms and patterns , including model gateways, tool registries, memory, guardrails, evaluation frameworks, and operational controls. Demonstr