Principal Software Engineer

Why Work Here

• Headquarters is in Charlotte, NC
• Recently expanded to nearshore
• isolved ranked for SMB Payroll in 2023 Sapient Report
• Voted top places to work in USA 2023

Job Description

The Principal Software Engineer for the WFM team is a technical leader who shapes how the team builds software in an AI-first development environment. This role combines deep architectural judgment with product awareness, helping the team make the right decisions about what to build, how to build it, and when AI-generated output is trustworthy versus when it needs human expertise.

This role is hands-on. This person brings clarity to ambiguous problems, coaches engineers on both stack proficiency and systems/product thinking, and ensures architectural decisions serve both current needs and long-term product direction. They are a key participant in the team's AI Development Lifecycle, an operating model where product, UX, engineering, and QA collaborate in real time to define and deliver solutions together. AI-assisted development is a core part of how the team works, and we expect you to use agentic coding, spec-driven development, and AI-augmented code review in your daily workflow.

Core Job Duties

Technical Leadership and Architecture

• Designing and implementing complex functionality, with hands-on ownership from architecture through delivery

• Owning architectural decisions for the WFM/Time product domain, including service design, data strategy (SQL Server, Azure CosmosDB or other NoSQL), and system integration patterns

• Setting and maintaining technical standards that account for AI-generated code, including review criteria, testing expectations, and quality gates

• Serving as primary technical contact for product owners and external teams

• Responsible for production support, including investigating and resolving third-level support escalations

  AI-First Development

• Working within the AI Development Lifecycle model, collaborating live with product, UX, engineering, and QA to define, build, and validate solutions in real time

• Leveraging AI coding tools, including GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor, as a core part of the development workflow

• Critically evaluating AI-generated code for correctness, performance, security, and architectural fit

• Helping define and evolve the team's AI development practices, identifying where AI accelerates delivery and where human judgment is essential

  Coaching and Team Development

• Providing frequent guidance and support to other developers, including hands-on, stack-specific mentoring (C#, Angular, SQL Server, etc.)

• Coaching engineers on problem decomposition, product thinking, and architectural judgment in addition to syntax and implementation detail

• Raising the team's ability to articulate problems clearly, evaluate AI output critically, and reason about systems holistically

• Helping engineers at all levels develop the judgment to know when AI-suggested solutions will create downstream pain

Product and Process

• Participating on the agile team to estimate and groom backlog items, plan development activities, and improve the development process
• Working with business analysts to clarify requirements and debug problems
• Anticipating how architectural decisions affect the product roadmap, and proactively surfacing risks and opportunities

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant web application/services development
• 10+ years large enterprise or e-business systems experience
• Demonstrated use of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) as a core part of professional development workflows
• Demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions that balance technical quality with product and business needs
• Ability to work independently to research and solve complex problems
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Experience mentoring and coaching engineers across multiple levels
• Strong skills with: Azure, Microservice Architecture, C#, SQL, Unit Testing, .NET, JavaScript, HTML
• Angular, Azure CosmosDB or other NoSQL database
• Pub/Sub and asynchronous messaging
• Docker, MVVM
• Experience with large (500+ database table) system development a plus
• Experience with the following a plus: working within an AI-first or AI Development Lifecycle model, Agile/Scrum experience including distributed teams
• Eager to learn and grow
• BS or BA degree preferred

About isolved

isolved is a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions that combines modern technology with expert services and support. Purpose-built for People Heroes™, isolved gives HR, payroll and benefits leaders the tools and insights to streamline operations and deliver employee experiences that matter. isolved People Cloud™ is a connected HCM platform with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics that brings together HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management and talent management in one experience. Built on a legacy of 40 years in the market, isolved is trusted by more than 200,000 employers and used by 9 million U.S. employees, representing about one in 20 American workers. Visit www.isolvedhcm.com.

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