Customer Experience Lead Software Engineer

The Team
As a Customer Experience Lead Software Engineer on the Direct Advisory Suite team, you are the advisor's advocate and the technical owner of complex, cross-system issues impacting usability, performance, functionality, and observability. You will lead the design and deployment of agentic, AI-driven automations that proactively resolve and prevent recurring client issues, including closed-loop auto-healing workflows that diagnose, remediate, and verify fixes at scale. Your work will focus on automation, rapid diagnosis, systemic fixes, and measurable improvements to customer experience (NPS, time-to-resolution, repeat contacts).
This position is based in our Chicago office. We follow a hybrid policy of at least 4 days onsite (Monday-Thursday). Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis.
The Opportunity
You will build AI-first customer support engineering that blends human expertise with agentic systems. This is a rare chance to apply AI to real production issues, create auto-resolution capabilities that scale across modules, and make a direct impact on how thousands of advisors experience our platform.
The Role
As a full stack developer in the Direct Advisory Suite team, you will provide high-level support to our customers, addressing their day-to-day issues with cutting-edge engineering solutions. In this role, you will:

• Observe and Understand: Monitor and analyze client issues for the modules you own. Use AI tools to detect patterns across tickets, logs, traces, and metrics.
• Diagnose with AI: Build agentic triage workflows that reproduce issues, isolate root causes, and propose fixes with guardrails and human-in-the-loop review when needed.
• Automate and Develop: Design, build, and deploy agentic solutions (AI agents/workflows) that auto-resolve recurring issues and prevent regressions.
• Architect and Propose: Propose and implement AI-first features that improve service quality and reduce manual intervention; partner with development teams to push service forward.
• Research and Solve: Use Python and modern AI tools to investigate root causes and develop robust, automated solutions alongside module owners.
• Cycle Back to Observe: Continuously evaluate automation effectiveness with metrics and evals; refine prompts, tools, and workflows.

Additionally, you will:

• Build and deploy well-designed, stable, scalable solutions adhering to established guidelines through peer reviews, unit tests, and CI/CD.
• Analyze and remediate production issues and build observability and operational readiness into the systems architecture.
• Manage some development projects throughout the entire project life cycle and apply DevOps practices for continuous and automated deployment.
• Mentor and lead team members in adopting AI tools and agentic automation practices, guiding them in delivering solutions and resolving technical problems.
• Drive a culture of proactive customer experience by identifying hotspots through data analysis, proposing fixes, and deploying automations that improve NPS and reduce repeat contacts.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering or a related field.
• Seven plus years of experience developing software solutions.
• Strong experience with Python.
• Building backends in C#, .NET, .NET Core.
• Hands-on experience building AI/LLM or agentic systems in production (RAG, tool calling, workflow orchestration, evaluation, safety/guardrails).
• Experience with AI tools and AI-powered coding assistants (GitHub Copilot/Claude Code/ Cursor) to accelerate development, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance code quality.
• Experience building applications in Amazon Web Services (ECS, Lambda, Glue Jobs, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ELB, CloudFront, Route53).
• Experience building web applications using modern web UI frameworks like Vue.js/React/Angular (preferably Vue.js).
• Experience implementing RESTful APIs and microservices.
• Hands-on experience with SQL and/or NoSQL databases (preferably MS SQL, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, CFT, CDK.
• Experience working in a collaborative and agile environment such as Scrum.
• Ability and willingness to learn new technologies.
• Excellent listening, written, and verbal communication skills.

Good to Have:

• AWS Certification
• Knowledge of networking and authentication fundamentals (TCP/IP, TLS 1.2, SAML 2.0, OIDC).
• Experience with Java, Spring, and Spring Boot, or Node.
• Experience with DevOps engineering concepts and tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Harness, Jenkins, Nexus, etc.
• Knowledge of APM tools such as NewRelic, Splunk or Google Looker Studio.
• Experience with LLMOps or agent orchestration tools (prompt management, evals, tracing, guardrails).
• Exposure to Financial Services and Capital Markets.

Compensation and Benefits
At Morningstar we believe people are at their best when they are at their healthiest. That's why we champion your wellness through a wide range of programs that support all stages of your personal and professional life. Here are some examples of the offerings we provide:

• Financial Health
  
  • 100% 401k match up to 6% of salary
  • Stock Ownership Potential
  • Company provided life insurance - 1x salary + commission
• Physical Health
  
  • Comprehensive health benefits (medical/dental/vision) including potential premium discounts and company-provided HSA contributions (up to $500-$2,000 annually) for specific plans and coverages
  • Additional medical Wellness Incentives - up to $300-$600 annual
  • Company-provided long- and short-term disability insurance
• Emotional Health
  
  • Trust-Based Time Off
  • 6-week Paid Sabbatical Program
  • 6-Week Paid Family Caregiving Leave
  • Competitive 8-24 Week Paid Parental Leave
  • Adoption Assistance
  • Leadership Coaching & Formal Mentorship Opportunities
  • Annual Flex Stipend - $1000 annually to cover personal education & well-being expenses
  • Tuition Reimbursement
• Social Health
  
  • Charitable Matching Gifts program
  • Dollars for Doers volunteer program
  • Paid volunteering days
  • 15+ Employee Resource & Affinity Groups

Total Cash Compensation Range
$114,100.00 - 193,975.00 USD Annual
Inclusive of annual base salary and target incentive
Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.
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