Java backend and full-stack engineers. A bank's platforms are built in Java. Payments, trading, customer records and the services behind the app are long-lived systems that must be reliable above all, and Java with Spring Boot is what the banks trust for them. The role is split evenly between pure backend work and full-stack work, where the same engineer also owns a React or Angular screen. Nearly every posting requires cloud and containers and the deployment pipeline, most require Kafka for the event streams between a bank's systems, and many require Spring Security, the part of Spring that handles who may call what. Java is almost twice the part of hiring here that it is at product companies, and the largest single role at every one of the big centres.

Cloud and DevOps engineers. The banks have moved their platforms onto AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, often all three, and still run much of their own estate. Cloud and DevOps engineers build the landing zones, the pipelines and the monitoring, with Python first, then Java, Terraform, Kubernetes, Jenkins and Ansible, and Grafana, Prometheus and Splunk for watching systems run. A notable share of postings require Go. The role is a larger part of hiring here than at product companies, and it is a little heavier at the centres that build the bank's apps and platforms, like JPMorganChase, Societe Generale and Commonwealth Bank, than at those that moved the whole engineering function, like NatWest Group, Wells Fargo and American Express.

GenAI engineers. Every large bank is building assistants for its staff, agents for its operations and the controls around them. GenAI engineers build those applications in Python with LangChain and LangGraph, on AWS, Azure or Google's Vertex AI, and an unusual share of postings require Responsible AI, which means the checks that keep a model's answers fair, explainable and within the bank's rules. This work is concentrated at JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo and Commonwealth Bank. It takes more juniors than most roles here.

Data engineers. A bank runs on data, on transactions, risk, regulatory reporting and the features behind fraud and credit models. Data engineers build the pipelines and the data platforms, in Python and Java with Spark, Airflow, Kafka, Hadoop, Databricks and Snowflake. They are about twice the part of hiring here that they are at product companies, and they are hired almost entirely with experience.

Enterprise application work and the business platforms. This is the layer a software company does not have. A bank buys as much as it builds, and a large group of engineers build and connect the bank's business systems. The largest part is enterprise application work, building and connecting those systems in ordinary code rather than on a packaged platform, in Java with Spring Boot, SQL and Oracle Database. NatWest Group posts the most of it, then JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo and Societe Generale, and it is close to three times its weight at product companies. Beside it sit engineers on named platforms. Salesforce engineers, at JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, American Express and U.S. Bank, build the bank's customer, marketing and service systems. ServiceNow engineers, at Wells Fargo, Societe Generale and American Express, build its IT requests and internal workflows. Low-code and automation developers, at NatWest Group, Wells Fargo, JPMorganChase and Empower, build internal tools with Power Apps, Power Automate, Pega and UiPath. Oracle and Workday engineers, at NatWest Group, Societe Generale and Bank of America, work on the HR and finance suites. ServiceNow and low-code work are several times their weight at product companies.

.NET engineers. Parts of every bank's estate were built on the Microsoft stack, and Commonwealth Bank has chosen it for much of its work. .NET engineers work in C# and ASP.NET Core on SQL Server or Oracle, nearly always with React or Angular on top, and the postings often require testing skills too. The role is a little below its weight at product companies and its share has fallen through 2026.

Software Engineer, Fintech. Software engineers who already know the financial business they will build for, whether trading, payments, risk or cards, and are hired for that knowledge as much as for their code. The skills are Java and Python with Kafka and a cloud, as elsewhere, but with the business on top. The clearest case is the trading-floor engineer, whose postings require the FIX protocol, the standard message format that trading systems use to send orders to each other. JPMorganChase and Wells Fargo hold most of the fintech software engineers.

Test engineers. Testing is a smaller part of hiring at the banks than at product companies, because the big centres fold testing into the engineering roles. Where test engineers are hired, they automate in Java with Selenium, Playwright, Cucumber and REST Assured, and run performance tests with JMeter. Test is a steady taker of juniors.

Mobile engineers. The bank's app is the product most customers ever see. Mobile engineers build it in Swift and SwiftUI for iOS and Kotlin with Jetpack Compose for Android. JPMorganChase holds most of this work, and it is a little more common at the platform centres than at the whole-function centres.

Frontend engineers. Frontend engineers build the screens of the bank's web platforms in React, with Angular in the older estates. They are a smaller part of hiring than at product companies, because so much of the screen work is folded into full-stack Java and .NET roles.

Software Engineer, Security. Software engineers who specialise in security: they build login systems, cloud and network protections, and the checks that keep code safe. At the banks they work on identity and access, with OAuth, OpenID Connect, LDAP and Active Directory, on application security and on cloud security with Terraform and Prisma Cloud. The role holds about its usual weight and sits mostly at JPMorganChase and Bank of America, with Commonwealth Bank behind them.

Generalist software engineers. The banks post many openings that name a language and a database rather than a product, mostly Java with Python and SQL. Some lean to applications, some to infrastructure and scripting in Python and SQL, and one large group at JPMorganChase leans to mobile. These are the bank's broad engineering pools, and they are among the readier takers of juniors.

Also present. Mainframe programmers in COBOL, JCL and CICS, the languages of the systems that still settle many a bank's accounts overnight, at JPMorganChase, NatWest Group, Wells Fargo and HSBC. ML engineers for model training and classical machine learning. Python and Go backend engineers in small numbers. C/C++ systems engineers, for network and low-level work, far below their usual weight. SAP engineers, also far below their usual weight, since SAP is the retailers' and manufacturers' platform rather than the banks'. A handful of embedded firmware engineers.

Rare here. Chip design does not appear.