Lead Software Engineer in Bloomington, Illinois at State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

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: Qualified candidates must live within a 180-mile radius of the Bloomington, IL office and should plan to spend time working from home and time working in the office as part of our hybrid work environment.
Sponsorship: Applicants 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.

About the Role:

Enterprise Technology’s Customer Communications team is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join our Electronic Delivery product team. We’re looking for a proven individual with a strong track record in strategic solution design, development, and deployment. In this role, you will play a critical part in modernizing our systems to better meet evolving customer expectations.

Electronic Delivery supports business areas by enabling one-way transactional digital communications (emails and texts) to State Farm customers. Additionally, we provide data analytics to help our business partners optimize these communications.

What You’ll Do:

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will design, develop, test, and support data and software solutions aligned with our business goals. You’ll work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality, scalable capabilities. We value strong problem-solving skills, a growth mindset, and a passion for leveraging emerging technologies to drive efficiency and innovation.

• Lead modernization efforts by designing strategic solutions on modern platforms and retiring legacy systems.
• Enhance and evolve application infrastructure to handle increased request volumes while maintaining agility for new requirements and technology/vendor changes.
• Identify and solve complex technical problems with innovative, long-term solutions.
• Participate in sprint planning, providing accurate work estimates and taking ownership of development stories.
• Deliver high-quality code that meets acceptance criteria and achieves desired outcomes.
• Lead solution design discussions with a focus on risk mitigation, performance, user experience, and testability.
• Engage in the full software development lifecycle: coding, testing, implementation, support, and system sunset.
• Explore and apply emerging technologies to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Foster a DevOps and DataOps culture, taking accountability for the product from inception through sunset.
• Implement DevOps best practices and build/maintain CI/CD pipelines.
• Architect scalable, secure, and resilient cloud-based solutions compliant with enterprise security and compliance standards.
• Drive technical innovation and continuous improvement by evaluating new tools, frameworks, and processes.
• Mentor and coach junior engineers to build technical skills and promote best practices across the team.
• Establish and enforce coding standards, code reviews, and documentation practices to ensure maintainability and quality.
• Lead root cause analysis and post-mortem reviews for production incidents to improve system reliability and prevent recurrence.
• Manage dependencies and integration points between internal and external systems, including third-party vendor solutions.
• Contribute to capacity planning and performance tuning to handle growing workloads efficiently.
• Lead technical discussions and design sessions to align on architecture and implementation approaches.
• Champion security best practices including data privacy, encryption, and secure API design.
• Support compliance audits and documentation related to data handling and software development processes.

• 10+ years of software development experience.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Go, Java, React, or similar.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services including RDS, S3, Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB.
• Strong skills in observability, defect analysis, and resolution.
• Experience building automated test suites, integrating with CI/CD pipelines, and working with containers and platform infrastructure.
• Deep understanding of system workflow design and architecture.
• Demonstrated DevOps mindset with accountability for the entire product lifecycle.
• Willingness to mentor and share knowledge to strengthen the team.
• Critical thinker who challenges the status quo and applies the right technologies to solve problems.
• Experience with Electronic Delivery email and text application infrastructure.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a passion for teamwork and mentoring.
• Understanding of how technology solutions support data, engineering, and analytics consumer outcomes.
• Experience designing and implementing microservices architectures and serverless applications.
• Proficiency with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes or ECS.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD tooling and pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, AWS CodePipeline).
• Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools such as Splunk, AWS CloudWatch, and Dynatrace.
• Knowledge of data engineering concepts and experience with streaming or batch processing frameworks.
• Advanced troubleshooting and debugging skills for distributed systems and cloud environments.
• Prior experience with customer-facing digital communication platforms or transactional messaging systems.
• Ability to write clear technical documentation and user guides.
• Experience mentoring and leading remote or distributed engineering teams.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies and tools.
• Knowledge of security best practices and secure coding standards.
• In depth knowledge of email undelivered flow.
• In depth knowledge of email and text flow.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and applications, including Agentic Workflows such as AI Agents, LangGraph, A2A, MCP Servers, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Prompt Engineering, and Chunking techniques.
• Experience with AWS Bedrock and OpenSearch for scalable cloud infrastructure and search solutions.
• Hands-on experience with Enterprise Kafka Event Bus for high-throughput, real-time data streaming.
• Proficiency in GraphQL for efficient and flexible API queries and data fetching.
• Knowledge of SFDS and Angular frameworks for building responsive and dynamic user interfaces.
• Experience with Postgres and related technologies for managing relational data.
• Familiarity with Databricks platform for advanced analytics and AI/ML workloads.

Desired Competencies:

• Strong communication skills
• Collaborative teamwork
• Initiative and proactive problem-solving
• Accountability and ownership

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: $130,000 - $155,000
  • 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!