Staff Software Engineer

About the job

There are over 7 billion people on this planet. And by 2050, there will be 2 billion more... many moving into urban centers at an unprecedented rate. Making sure there is enough food, fiber and infrastructure for our rapidly growing world is what we're all about at John Deere. And it's why we're investing in our people and our technology like never before! Here the world's brightest minds are tackling the world's biggest challenges. If you believe one person can make the world a better place, we'll put you to work. RIGHT NOW.

John Deere is an equal opportunity employer, including disabled & veterans.

Primary Location: United States (US) - Illinois - Chicago
Function: Technology (CA)
Title: Staff Software Engineer - 123173
Onsite/Remote:Onsite Position

Your Responsibilities

As a Staff Software Engineer for John Deere World Headquarters located in Chicago, IL, you will:

• Lead architecture, design, and implementation of complex, multisystem solutions across multiple digital products
• Analyze business needs and define system specifications and architectural requirements
• Lead design reviews that ensure high quality, maintainable, scalable, reliable, and secure software and data products
• Develop coding standards, integration patterns, and data pipeline standards in partnership with architects and principal engineers
• Provide expert full stack leadership, defining patterns and enabling delivery across React/Redux front ends, Java/Spring Boot and Python microservices, and secure REST APIs (Java, Spring, Node, serverless), while enforcing secure by design practices and mentoring engineers to apply them consistently
• Lead the definition, implementation, and validation of non-functional requirements, including scalability, reliability, performance, availability, and security
• Guide teams in designing for operational excellence, including resilience, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and production readiness
• Establish observability standards using platforms such as New Relic, Datadog, CloudWatch, or Grafana, ensuring services are instrumented with high quality logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerts
• Drive platform standardization efforts by shaping reusable architectural patterns, shared components, and common frameworks across Global IT

Your Responsibilities (Continued)

• Mentor and coach junior and senior engineers to build deep technical capability across stacks
• Promote best practices for engineering, design, documentation, code review, and operational readiness
• Stay current with emerging technologies, engineering trends, and cloud native practices; continuously upskill and adapt to evolving business needs
• Evaluate new tools, frameworks, and patterns to determine their strategic fit for long term architecture and platform evolution
• Collaborate with Product Managers, UX, Architecture, and cross functional teams to shape product roadmaps
• Represent engineering in strategic discussions and help define long term technology direction
• Promote a culture of learning, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing across Global IT
• Lead AI assisted engineering practices by shaping agent oriented development patterns (prompt design, tool orchestration, guardrails) that accelerate delivery while preserving code quality, security, and traceability
• Practice and scale Vibe Coding as a core discipline—use AI pair programming to draft code, tests, and documentation at speed, and validate outputs rigorously through reviews, static analysis, and automated testing before merge

VISA Sponsorship is NOT available for this position

What Skills You Need

• 8 or more years of experience designing and developing backend applications using Java frameworks, servlets, J2EE, and Spring or Spring Boot
• 6 or more years of experience developing front end applications using JavaScript, HTML, CSS, React, and Redux
• 4 or more years operating cloud native systems in AWS or Azure, including containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes or EKS)
• 4 or more years building serverless applications using AWS Lambda and API Gateway or equivalent
• 5 or more years designing and integrating databases with technologies such as MongoDB, DynamoDB, and relational databases
• Proven ability to work with architects, product leaders, and principal engineers to align technology strategy
• Experienced in designing secure systems, applying security by design principles, and implementing authentication and authorization frameworks such as OAuth, OIDC, and SAML
• Demonstrated ability to lead design reviews, mentor engineers, and influence teams across organizational boundaries
• Evaluate new tools, frameworks, and patterns to determine their strategic fit for long term architecture
• Promote a culture of learning within the team and encourage knowledge sharing across Global IT
• Hands on observability expertise instrumenting services and creating actionable dashboards/alerts with New Relic, Datadog, CloudWatch, or Grafana; strong grasp of metrics, logs, traces, SLOs/SLAs, and on call readiness
• Non functional engineering leadership designing for scalability, reliability, performance, and availability, including load shedding, autoscaling, partitioning, caching, and high availability/failover pattern

What Makes You Standout

• Demonstrated passion for continuous learning, upskilling, and staying current with cloud, AI, and engineering trends
• AWS or Azure cloud certifications
• Experience with event driven architectures and distributed messaging
• Experience contributing to or defining cross team architectural patterns
• Strong communication and stakeholder alignment skills
• Experience applying AI assisted engineering (agentic workflows, prompt patterns, secure guardrails) to improve speed and quality
• Proficiency with Vibe Coding practices and agentic development, including disciplined review and verification of AI generated code, tests, and documentation

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or closely related field

What You'll Get

At John Deere, you are empowered to create a career that will take you to where you want to go while working in an inclusive team environment. Here, you'll enjoy the freedom to explore new projects, the support to think outside the box and the advanced tools and technology that foster innovation and achievement. Additionally, we offer a comprehensive reward package to help you get started on your new career path, including:

• Flexible work arrangements
• Highly competitive base pay
• Savings & Retirement benefits (401K and Defined Contribution)
• Healthcare benefits with a generous company contribution in the Health Savings Account
• Adoption assistance
• Employee Assistance Programs
• Tuition assistance
• Fitness subsidies and on-site gyms at specific Deere locations
• Charitable contribution match
• Employee Purchase Plan & numerous discount programs for personal use
• Vacation and Holiday Pay

$141,132.00 - $211,692.00 + Benefits

Follow this link to learn more about our Total Rewards Package https://bit.ly/3XCd8fL

Must be 18 years of age or older to apply

The information contained herein is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities and qualifications required of individuals performing the job. The qualifications detailed in this job description are not considered the minimum requirements necessary to perform the job, but rather as guidelines.