AVP – Principal Software Engineer - L11

Job Description:

Role Title : AVP, Principal Software Engineer (L11)

Company Overview : Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a premier consumer financial services company delivering one of the industry’s most complete digitally enabled product suites. Our experience, expertise and scale encompass a broad spectrum of industries including digital, health and wellness, retail, telecommunications, home, auto, outdoors, pet and more.

• We have recently been ranked #2 among India’s Best Companies to Work for by Great Place to Work. We were among the Top 50 India’s Best Workplaces in Building a Culture of Innovation by All by GPTW and Top 25 among Best Workplaces in BFSI by GPTW. We have also been recognized by AmbitionBox Employee Choice Awards among the Top 20 Mid-Sized Companies, ranked #3 among Top Rated Companies for Women, and Top-Rated Financial Services Companies.

• We provide best-in-class employee benefits and programs that cater to work-life integration and overall well-being.

• We provide career advancement and upskilling opportunities for all to take up leadership roles.

Organizational Overview:

This role sits within Synchrony’s Front-End Engineering organization, which builds and maintains the web applications that power digital experiences for over 60 million customers and hundreds of brand partners. Our teams are focused on delivering seamless, accessible, and high-performance user experiences at scale — from consumer-facing product interfaces to partner integration portals. As AI dissolves the traditional boundaries between front-end, back-end, and platform engineering, this organization is evolving beyond its front-end anchor. Engineers increasingly work fluidly across the full stack, leveraging AI-assisted development and agentic workflows to deliver end-to-end solutions. This Tech Lead will help drive that evolution within their team while keeping user experience excellence at the center of everything we build.

Role Summary/Purpose

Billions of transactions—and you’ll touch all of them if you join our IT team as a Principal Front-End Engineer. Imagine the sheer scale of what we impact every second of every day. Now imagine what you can do with that influence—this is where you can shape the future of payments.

You’ll work within multi-disciplinary teams to deliver on business goals. This person will be responsible for both the development of new features and the overall success of deliveries including analysis and design, development, deployment, optimization, and day to day operations. The role can be broken down into the following key aspects:

1.     Communicator: You act as a translator between business stakeholders and your engineering team, ensuring no miscommunications.

2.     Coach: You are a mentor to your engineering team, taking every opportunity to up-skill our developers—including on AI-assisted development practices.

3.     Quality control: You have battle-tested JavaScript knowledge and can dive deep into the code—whether human-written or AI-generated—to provide thoughtful feedback and ensure the highest quality.

It’s the ideal time to come aboard—we’re focused on the future as we continue to evolve as a company. With so many opportunities available, this is where you can make your mark and help define the FinTech industry.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead development teams through all phases of the Agile development life cycle.

• Coach and mentor junior talent, including pair-programming and reviewing AI-generated code with engineering judgment.

• Influence and collaborate with software developers, UX designers, product managers, application architects, and customer application experts to create amazing apps.

• Champion responsible adoption of AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor) on the team—setting prompt patterns, distinguishing AI Skills (deterministic capabilities) from Agents (autonomous, multi-step workflows), and following Synchrony’s guidance for data handling, PII protection, IP compliance, and code provenance in regulated financial services contexts.

• Ensure compliance with architecture, security, and technology standards set by Synchrony.

• Participate in addressing root cause analyses, incident reports, and provide direction in problem resolution.

• Ability to analyze production defects, troubleshoot systems, identify root cause, and implement fixes.

• Provide 24x7 on-call support periodically throughout the year.

• Identify ways to increase efficiency and improve system performance, including by piloting AI tools and agentic workflows for repetitive engineering tasks.

• Work with third party vendors to develop software and/or integrate their software into Synchrony’s products.

Required Skills/Knowledge:

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years in full stack development with a strong focus on JavaScript (React JS in particular) OR, in lieu of degree, with 7 years of experience in the same.

• Hands-on experience using at least one AI coding assistant (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent) as part of regular development workflow.

• Proficiency in TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Redux, Styled-Components, and RTL or Cypress.

• Familiarity with AI-native concepts—RAG patterns, vector databases, MCP (Model Context Protocol), and agent orchestration—and how they differ from traditional architecture.

• Awareness of the open-source AI tooling ecosystem (Continue.dev, Aider, Cline, Ollama).

• Exposure to building or customizing AI agents/skills using LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Azure OpenAI) for engineering automation such as code review, documentation, or migration assistants.

• Live and breathe testing.

Desired Skills/Knowledge:

• Knowledge of industry-wide technology trends and best practices.

• Ability to work in large, collaborative teams to achieve organizational goals.

• Advanced knowledge of application, data, and infrastructure architecture disciplines.

• Extremely self-driven and can work autonomously.

• A desire to be in the FinTech space.

• Start-up or consulting experience.

Eligibility Criteria:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, plus 5+ years of experience in software development, design, and architecture. Proven track record as a tech lead or senior individual contributor.

WORK TIMINGS: 2:00 PM to 11:00 PM IST

This role qualifies for Enhanced Flexibility offered in Synchrony India and will require the incumbent to be available between 06:00 AM Eastern Time – 11:30 AM Eastern Time (timings are anchored to US Eastern hours and will adjust twice a year locally). This window is for meetings with India and US teams. The remaining hours will be flexible for the employee to choose. Exceptions may apply periodically due to business needs.

For Internal Applicants:

• Understand the criteria or mandatory skills required for the role, before applying

• Inform your manager and HRM before applying for any role on Workday

• Ensure that your professional profile is updated (fields such as education, prior experience, other skills) and it is mandatory to upload your updated resume (Word or PDF format)

• Must not be on any corrective action plan (First Formal/Final Formal, LPP)

• L9+ Employees who have completed 18 months in the organization and 12 months in current role and level are only eligible.

• L9+ Level Employees can apply

Level / Grade : 11

Job Family Group:

Information Technology