{"id":3532846,"url":"https://alion.io/job/aperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers","title":"Principal Engineer & Technical Lead — Azure / Containers","company":{"id":449656,"name":"Aperia Solutions","domain":"aperia.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/aperia-solutions","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Dallas, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":128000,"max_usd":255000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1231},"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":".NET","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Azure AKS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure Cosmos DB","optional":false},{"name":"Azure DevOps","optional":false},{"name":"Azure SQL Database","optional":false},{"name":"Bicep","optional":false},{"name":"C#","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Clean Architecture","optional":false},{"name":"ClickHouse","optional":false},{"name":"Dapr","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Grafana","optional":false},{"name":"Helm","optional":false},{"name":"KEDA","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"LangChain","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Defender for Cloud","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Entra ID","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Fabric","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","optional":false},{"name":"PCI DSS","optional":false},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Semantic Kernel","optional":false},{"name":"Service Mesh","optional":false},{"name":"SOC 2","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon EKS","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Vault","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-30T14:21:56Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-30","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T01:26:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"About Aperia Solutions \nAperia Solutions is a leading payments SaaS company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. We build risk management, residuals accounting, compliance, and analytics platforms used by merchant banks, ISOs, payment processors, and other participants in the credit card payments ecosystem. Operating under PCI DSS 4.0 compliance across dual on-premises datacenters (Allen, TX and Chicago, IL) plus Azure cloud, we process high-volume payment data for some of the industry’s largest players. \nWe’re in the middle of a significant platform modernization program: a next-generation risk analysis and scoring platform on Microsoft Fabric, an AI-powered ingestion platform, new AI-native applications, and ongoing evolution of the products our clients rely on every day. The teams executing this work are deliberately small and senior, with executive-level support and minimal bureaucracy. Every senior hire is a founding contributor to the architecture and the code. \nRole summary \nWe are hiring a Principal Engineer and Technical Lead: a builder first, with deep architecture and enterprise design pattern experience behind every line of code. This person is the SVP of Technology's chief lieutenant on technical execution. You will take on the heaviest technical lifting, prove risky ideas with working prototypes, turn approved architecture into production systems, and hold distributed engineering teams to a high technical bar. \nThis is a hands-on role, not an architecture-only or slideware role. Target architecture is set with technology leadership; you own making it real, from implementation design, code and IaC through the hard production problems, and you push back with evidence when a design won't hold up in implementation. \nThe platform is a regulated, multi-tenant payments SaaS built on Azure, Microsoft Fabric, AKS, C#/.NET and Python. You will report directly to the SVP of Technology and act as the senior hands-on technical authority across platform, data and AI initiatives. \nTitle options: Principal Engineer, Lead Software Engineer / Technical Lead - Cloud Platforms, or Staff Engineer - Azure. \nWhat you'lldo \nHands-on engineering, POCs and heavy lifting (≈50%) \nBuild working prototypes and POCs for advanced concepts (LLM/RAG services, event-driven pipelines, multi-tenant patterns, new Azure services) to retire technical risk before teams commit. \nOwn the hardest technical slices end to end: write and ship production-quality C#/.NET and Python, debug production issues, and unblock teams by doing the work rather than delegating it. \nImplement enterprise design patterns in real code: event-driven and messaging (outbox, saga, idempotent consumers, retries and dead-lettering), CQRS, resilience (circuit breaker, bulkhead, backpressure), caching and multi-tenant isolation. \nAuthor and review IaC (Terraform/Bicep), Helm charts and CI/CD pipelines; build the golden-path templates teams adopt. \nBenchmark and load test candidate designs; bring numbers, not opinions, to technical decisions. \nTake on heavy-lift tasks directly from the SVP: technical spikes, hands-on vendor evaluations, migration tooling, and performance and cost investigations. \nDesign and implementation patterns (≈25%) \nTurn target-state architectures into implementation designs: service boundaries, contracts, data models and deployment topology across AKS, Container Apps, Functions, APIM, Service Bus/Event Hubs, Cosmos DB and Azure SQL. \nBuild and harden integration paths into Microsoft Fabric (OneLake, Lakehouse/Warehouse, mirroring, Real-Time Intelligence), knowing where the sharp edges are from having hit them. \nWrite ADRs and design docs for the decisions made during implementation, and contribute to architecture reviews and threat models with implementation-level detail. \nImplement regulated-workload controls in code and IaC: network isolation, private endpoints, identity (Entra ID, managed identity, workload identity), secrets, encryption and audit. \nBring run-cost to every build: estimate before, measure after, and flag designs that won't scale economically. \nTechnical leadership with delivery teams (≈25%) \nAct as the SVP's chief lieutenant on technical execution: carry decisions into teams, keep builds aligned with approved designs, and stand in on technical matters when the SVP is unavailable. \nRun design reviews, code reviews and technical checkpoints with onshore and offshore teams across multiple time zones. \nTrack technical status and surface risk early: integration gaps, drift from approved designs, quality and security debt. \nMentor senior engineers and tech leads; raise the bar on implementation quality, testing and observability. \nTranslate implementation status and risk into concise options for technology leadership, and work directly with security, product and vendors. \nTechnical stack \nCandidates should be expert in the core column and fluent in most of the adjacent column. \n\nArea \n\nCore (expert) \n\nAdjacent (fluent) \n\nCloud \n\nAzure: AKS, Container Apps, APIM, Functions, Service Bus, Event Hubs, Key Vault, Front Door \n\nAzure Policy, Landing Zones, AWS/EKS equivalents \n\nData \n\nMicrosoft Fabric, OneLake, Cosmos DB, Azure SQL \n\nDatabricks, Synapse, ClickHouse, Kafka \n\nLanguages \n\nC# / .NET 8+, Python \n\nTypeScript, SQL/KQL, Go \n\nDesign patterns \n\nEvent-driven/messaging (outbox, saga, idempotency), CQRS, resilience patterns, multi-tenant isolation \n\nDDD, hexagonal/clean architecture, API versioning, enterprise integration patterns \n\nContainers \n\nDocker, Kubernetes, Helm \n\nDapr, KEDA, service mesh, GitOps (Flux/Argo) \n\nIaC and delivery \n\nTerraform, Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions \n\nBicep, policy-as-code, container image signing/scanning \n\nAI \n\nAzure OpenAI / AI Foundry, RAG patterns \n\nSemantic Kernel, LangChain, vector search, evaluation tooling \n\nObservability \n\nAzure Monitor, App Insights, OpenTelemetry \n\nPrometheus, Grafana \n\nSecurity \n\nEntra ID, managed/workload identity, private networking \n\nDefender for Cloud, PCI DSS controls \n\nRequired qualifications \n12+ years in software engineering, including 5+ years as a lead or principal engineer shipping production cloud systems. \n4+ years building and operating containerized workloads on Kubernetes in production, preferably AKS. \nDeep, current hands-on Azure experience: you have personally built, deployed and debugged the services you work with. \nCode you can show: substantial, active C#/.NET and Python work in the last 12 months, not just reviews. You are still one of the strongest individual contributors on any team you join. \nDeep, applied command of enterprise design patterns (messaging, resilience, integration, multi-tenancy); you can explain their failure modes because you have hit them in production. \nTrack record of taking a novel concept from whiteboard to working POC in weeks, then building or leading the first production slice. \nWorking architecture depth across operational and analytical data stores, including event-driven and streaming implementations. \nFluency with IaC and CI/CD; you write the Terraform and the pipeline, not just the diagram. \nSecurity-first implementation in a regulated environment (PCI DSS, SOC 2, or financial services equivalent). \nProven ability to lead distributed and offshore teams through design and code reviews without direct authority. \nClear written communication: ADRs, design docs and status summaries that stand on their own. \nPreferred qualifications \nPayments, card processing, risk/fraud, or merchant services domain experience. \nProduction Microsoft Fabric work, including mirroring from Cosmos DB or SQL and Fabric capacity sizing. \nShipped LLM-backed features: RAG, agent/tool patterns, content safety, evaluation and red-teaming. \nMulti-tenant SaaS design: tenant isolation, noisy-neighbor controls, per-tenant cost attribution. \nAzure certifications such as Azure Developer (AZ-204), DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400), CKAD/CKA, or Fabric Analytics Engineer (DP-600). Nice to have, never a substitute for demonstrated work. \nOpen-source contributions, technical writing or conference talks. \nEligibility Requirements\nMust be willing to submit to a background investigation and drug test as part of the selection process.\nJob Type\nFull-time\nSchedule\nHybrid: Monday to Friday \nWork Location\nDallas, TX\nBenefits\nHealth insurance \nHealth savings account\nDental insurance\nVision insurance\n401(k) matching\nLife insurance\nPaid time off\nParental leave\nDisability insurance\nChildcare assistance\nEducation reimbursement\nFitness membership\nVolunteer time off","description_format":"text","description_chars":8552,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Dental insurance","Health insurance","Life insurance","Parental leave","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Financial Software & Embedded Finance","Customer & Retention Analytics","Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-30T16:37:12Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 11 · green card filings: 1","filings_12m":11,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":1,"median_offered_wage_usd":115417,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":8}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:3","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/aperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/aperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T04:56:20Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":6674,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":449656},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=449656"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Faperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Faperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Faperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/aperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Faperia-solutions-principal-engineer-technical-lead-azure-containers"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3532846}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"aperia.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3532846},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); 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