Principal Software Engineer

Job Title: Principal Software Engineer Duration: 1 Year Contract with strong chance of extension

Responsibilities:

• Architecture & Strategic Vision: Architect and guide the implementation of highly scalable, resilient APIs and enterprise-grade distributed systems using React, NestJS, and Spring Boot.
• Technical & Cultural Leadership: Drive engineering excellence, establish technical standards, and mentor senior engineers across teams. Promote a culture of continuous learning, secure code delivery, and operational rigor.
• Strategic Change Management: Lead cross-functional transformations - such as modernizing legacy architectures, migrating cloud platforms, or instilling AI-assisted development practices - while actively managing risk and technical friction.
• Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure: Design cloud-native, event-driven microservices architectures. Establish enterprise patterns for containerized deployments (Azure Container Apps, APIM, Docker), CI/CD pipelines via Azure DevOps, and declarative Infrastructure as Code (Bicep/Terraform).
• System Observability & Reliability: Oversee end-to-end telemetry strategies using Azure monitoring and telemetry to ensure zero-downtime releases, proactive incident response, and observable system health.
• Data & Performance Strategy: Lead the data strategy by designing and optimizing complex relational and NoSQL database schemas tailored for scale, security, and low latency.
• Agile Execution & Delivery: Champion iterative delivery in fast-moving environments. Drive bias for action through feature-flagged deployments, rapid prototyping, and a strong shipping-to-production mindset over theoretical completeness.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with product executives, business stakeholders, and principal architects to translate strategic business vision into scalable, value-delivering software architectures.

Qualifications:

• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a proven track record of architectural leadership on high-throughput, enterprise-scale platforms.\
• 8+ years of expert-level web and API development using modern frameworks (React, NestJS, Node.js) and enterprise Java/Spring Boot.
• Enterprise Architecture Mastery: Deep expertise in event-driven microservices, cloud-native design patterns, API gateway configuration (APIM), containerization (Docker, Azure Container Apps), and automated IaC (Bicep, Terraform, or ARM).
• Strategic & Excellence Mindset: Demonstrated ability to evaluate architectural trade-offs, drive long-term technical roadmaps, balance speed-to-market with technical debt resolution, and maintain uncompromising quality standards.
• Change Management & Technical Transformation: Proven history of leading org-wide technical changes (e.g., adopting new tech stacks, modernizing DevOps practices, or implementing secure AI-assisted development pipelines).
• Operational & Release Excellence: Expertise in defining robust branching strategies, feature-flag architectures, multi-region deployment plans, and disaster recovery strategies.
• System Security & Compliance: Deep understanding of zero-trust security frameworks, modern identity/auth patterns (OAuth2, OIDC), and enterprise data compliance standards.
• Executive Communication: Outstanding ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, align executive teams around technical strategies, and lead high-impact decision-making forums.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications:

• Domain Expertise: Experience building rule/pricing engines or complex transaction-processing platforms.
• Advanced Frontend Architecture: Familiarity with TanStack, micro-frontends, or modern state management libraries at scale.
• Observability Engineering: Hands-on mastery of Application Insights, Log Analytics, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, and automated incident remediation.
• Process Mastery: Experience utilizing advanced features in Agile tools (ADO/JIRA) to structure multi-team planning, track technical debt metrics, and optimize flow efficiency.