Lead Software Engineer - Federated GraphQL

Overview

Being good neighbors – helping people, investing in our communities, and making the world a better place – is who we are at State Farm. It is at the core of how we operate and the reason for our success. Come join a #1 team and do some good!

HYBRID: A “Hybrid” position means selected candidates will be assigned to a facility and will spend some time working both in the office and from home. For Enterprise Technology, a hybrid work arrangement will require approximately 40% in-office time each month, beginning in late 2027.
HUB LOCATIONS: Richardson, TX

SPONSORSHIP: Applicants for this position are required to be eligible to lawfully work in the U.S. immediately; employer will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work authorization (e.g. H-1B visa) for this opportunity.

Grow Your Skills, Grow Your Potential


Responsibilities

The Policy Graph team is building the GraphQL layer that unifies policy data across State Farm's lines of business and policy systems, making it accessible to applications, digital experiences, and AI. We're building this from the ground up, defining the schemas, engineering patterns, and architecture that will support enterprise-wide access to policy data.

The technical challenges are significant. Policy data varies by state, line of business, and underlying system, spanning legacy platforms and multiple generations of modernization efforts. Our job is to bring that complexity into a consistent, modernized data model exposed through a performant and scalable graph. We're currently prototyping in TypeScript, but the production stack is still open. TypeScript, Go, Java, or a combination will be evaluated based on performance, scalability, and engineering tradeoffs.

We're looking for engineers who have built and run federated GraphQL in production and want to help shape it at enterprise scale.

What you'll do

• Bring federated GraphQL expertise to the team: entity design, schema composition and evolution, and patterns other domains can follow.
• Design the Policy GraphQL schema with architects and data model stewards.
• Work closely with partner teams: architecture, consuming domains, policy administration system teams and the GraphQL platform team.
• Build federated subgraphs that read close to the source: straight from databases, policy administration system APIs, or a read model we own.
• Own performance against p99 targets: load test, profile and tune.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering experience.
• Production experience with federated GraphQL: designing entities and keys, composing and evolving schemas across teams, for example with Apollo Federation or similar.
• Passion for the work and a collaborative approach: you pair, give thoughtful code reviews, and welcome healthy debate with teammates and partner teams.
• Backend development in one or more of Go, Java or Node.js/TypeScript.
• Picks up new languages and technologies quickly.
• Uses AI coding assistants effectively in day-to-day work.
• Integrated services that call other systems, handling slow or failing dependencies, for example with timeouts, retries and batching.
• Builds for the long term: automated unit, integration and end-to-end tests that catch regressions and keep the code safe to change.

Desired, not required

• Led federated GraphQL adoption or schema governance across multiple teams.
• Go GraphQL (gqlgen) or Java GraphQL (Spring for GraphQL, Netflix DGS).
• Temporal, or another durable workflow engine, for long-running processes.
• Diagnosed and fixed a latency or throughput problem using an APM tool such as Dynatrace or OpenTelemetry.
• Built APIs on Kubernetes or OpenShift, and AWS.
• Worked with canonical or industry data models, such as ACORD.
• Insurance experience is a plus, not a requirement.
• gRPC, event-driven systems or caching.

Our Benefits

Because work-life balance is a priority at State Farm, compensation is based on our standard 38:45-hour work week!

• Potential starting salary range: $123,000 - $142,000. Starting salary will be based on skills, background, and experience. High end of the range limited to applicants with significant relevant experience.
• Potential yearly incentive pay up to 15% of base salary

At State Farm, we offer more than just a paycheck. Check out our suite of benefits designed to give you the flexibility you need to take care of you and your family!

• Get Paid! On top of our competitive pay, you are eligible for an annual raise and bonus.
• Stay Well! Focus on you and your family’s health with our robust health and wellbeing programs. State Farm pays most of your healthcare premium, and we offer multiple healthcare plan options, including a high deductible plan. All medical plans provide 100% coverage for in-network preventative care, AND you and your family have access to vision, dental, telemedicine, 24/7 mental health professionals, and much more!
• Develop and Grow! Take advantage of educational benefits like industry leading training programs, top-notch tuition assistance programs, employee resource groups, and mentoring.
• Plan Ahead! Plan for those big moments in life with benefits like fertility/IVF/adoption assistance, college coaching, national discount programs, interactive monthly financial workshops, free financial coaching, and more. You can also start a savings account or consider financing through our State Farm Federal Credit Union!
• Take a Little “You” Time! You will have access to our generous time off policies designed so you can plan around holidays, family events, volunteering, or just to take a relaxing day off. With the opportunity to initially earn up to 20 days annually plus parental leave, paid holidays, celebration day, life leave (40 hours/year), bereavement leave, and community service/education support days, there will be plenty of time for you!
• Give Back! We offer several ways to give back through our Matching Gift Program, Good Neighbor Grant Program, and the Employee Assistance Fund.
• Finish Strong! Plan for retirement using free financial advisors and a 401(k) plan with company contributions of up to 7% of your salary.

Visit our State Farm Careers page for more information on our benefits, locations, and the hiring process of joining the State Farm team!