Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Location: Remote (US) | Type: Contract | Experience: 10+ years | Pay: Up to $90/hr

About the Role

We're hiring a Principal Software Engineer to be the senior technical leader on enterprise engagements at a cloud services and application modernization consultancy. You'll own architectural direction and delivery for cloud-native systems at large, complex organizations, lead the engineering team on the account, and work directly with client leadership.

Much of this job is reading a complicated environment quickly and being credible in the room while you do it. You'll frequently sit in blended teams alongside client engineers, working inside their codebase and their process, and improving both without making it a fight.

If you like walking into a half-built system and figuring out what should actually change, that's most of the work.

What You'll Do

• Set architectural direction on enterprise engagements and make the key design calls, keeping delivery tied to what the business is trying to accomplish
• Assess in-flight projects, evaluating architecture, codebase, team dynamics, and backlog, then say plainly what's working and what isn't
• Define the strategy for replacing legacy and monolithic systems with cloud-native microservice architectures
• Architect and maintain microservice systems with real attention to scalability, resilience, and maintainability across distributed environments
• Design service integration patterns: inter-service communication, API gateway configuration, external platform integration, distributed data flows
• Lead large feature releases that cross team boundaries or need coordination with client teams
• Use AI development tools to move faster while applying the rigor to validate, test, and refactor the output, and coach the team to do the same
• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and technical coaching, and enforce standards for quality, testing, and deployment
• Support scoping and estimation, provide technical input into statements of work, and join pre-sales conversations when needed
• Contribute reference architectures and accelerators back to the wider practice

Qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years building and delivering production applications from design through release and iteration
• Architected and led microservice-based systems in production, not just worked on them
• Integrated with complex third-party enterprise platforms via APIs
• Java, Kotlin, and/or Go at a level sufficient to assess and modernize existing backend services during legacy migrations
• Client-facing consulting or professional services delivery experience preferred
• Stakeholder range: equally comfortable presenting to a CTO and whiteboarding with a junior developer

Advanced Skills

• Multiple architecture patterns in depth, including microservices and event-driven
• Expert microservices work: service discovery, API gateways, REST, gRPC, messaging, distributed tracing
• React 18+ with TypeScript, including component architecture, state management, and performance optimization
• HTML5 and CSS, TailwindCSS v4 preferred
• Data and retrieval pattern design across PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, and data pipeline architectures

Intermediate Skills

• Kubernetes and container orchestration, EKS preferred
• Docker image building and optimization for local and production use
• Terraform with state management, or CloudFormation / CDK
• AWS across Lambda, EC2/EKS, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, API Gateway, S3, RDS, DynamoDB
• Jest and/or PyTest, plus REST and WebSocket architectures
• Legacy system assessment and modernization strategy

Nice to Have

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
• Expert Python including async and concurrency, packaging, testing, and FastAPI
• AI agent frameworks, agentic workflow patterns, or hands-on LLM integration
• Financial services, capital markets, or asset management domain experience
• Regulated or compliance-heavy delivery environments

Why Join Us

This is a practice where the principal engineer is expected to have opinions and defend them, with clients and internally. You'll shape how modernization work gets done across engagements, not just on your own account.