Description
The Principal Software Engineer is a technical leader who applies expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the university. They will lead Agile delivery practices, design and evolve cloud-native architectures, and evaluate technical decisions through a build, buy, borrow, or bot lens.
Responsibilities:
- Partner with engineering and product leadership to define technical strategy and delivery roadmaps
- Build and ship production-grade software while establishing engineering standards
- Lead Agile delivery practices that balance planning with rapid execution
- Design and evolve cloud-native architectures with emphasis on scalability, observability, reliability, security, and operational supportability
- Evaluate technical decisions through a build, buy, borrow, or bot lens
- Mentor engineers on modern software engineering practices and emerging technologies
- Prototype new tools, frameworks, and architectural patterns
- Drive engineering excellence across multiple teams
- Partner with infrastructure, cloud, security, architecture, and product teams
- Identify architectural inefficiencies and propose practical solutions
- Communicate technical strategy and risks to executive leadership
- Support operational readiness and incident response
Requirements:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related field
- 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience
- Experience building and operating web applications using Java, REST APIs, SQL, and Git
- Experience designing and delivering system integrations with third-party and internal platforms
- Track record in large-scale enterprise IT organizations
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
- Experience with Kafka/Confluent and integration middleware
- Hands-on AWS experience
- Spring Boot, Kubernetes, and container orchestration in production
- Observability stacks and custom metrics
- Familiarity with AI/ML platforms and agentic frameworks
- Higher education, EdTech, or regulated industry experience
Benefits:
- Bonuses
- Medical, dental, vision, telehealth, and mental healthcare
- Health savings account and flexible spending account
- Basic and voluntary life insurance
- Disability coverage
- Accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages
- Legal and identity theft coverage
- Retirement savings plan
- Wellbeing program
- Discounted WGU tuition
- Flexible paid time off and sick time
- 11 paid holidays and other paid leaves