Software Principal Engineer

Candescent is a forward-thinking technology company transforming how financial institutions deliver Intelligent Banking experiences. We unite digital banking, account opening, and branch solutions that power and connect digital banking, account opening, and branch solutions-creating seamless engagement across digital, remote, and in-person channels.

Our Experience-Led, Intelligence-Driven approach combines human-centered design with data, automation, and cloud-based innovation. Built on an API-first architecture, our extensible ecosystem enables institutions to adapt quickly, integrate easily, and unlock new opportunities for growth-turning every customer interaction into a moment of clarity, confidence, and connection.

Principal Engineer

Position Summary

We are seeking talented Principal Engineers to lead the architectural vision and evolution of our SaaS platform into a modern, resilient, and AI-powered ecosystem. This role plays a critical part in shaping our long-term technology strategy, providing cross-team technical leadership, and ensuring our platform is secure, scalable, performant, and data driven. Principal Engineers work across product domains to design efficient, future-proof solutions that align with strategic objectives, proactively reducing technical roadblocks and coordinating dependencies across teams.

A primary focus of this role is driving the consolidation of multiple banking products into a unified, extensible platform with a shared architecture-promoting consistency, operational efficiency, and accelerated innovation. The Principal Engineer will also guide the design of scalable APIs, enhance developer experience, and lead efforts to enable seamless integration with fintech partners, core banking systems, and third-party providers. This is a highly collaborative and strategic role for a forward-thinking engineer who is passionate about platform transformation and delivering long-term impact. This title may also be called Architect.

Product Summary

Our mission is to enable community, mid-market, and large financial institutions to deliver exceptional account-related services in a cost-efficient way. Our best-in-class servicing platform offers a superior experience for both customers and bankers, driving efficiency through best-practice workflows, streamlined processes, and end-to-end automation.

Key Areas of Responsibility

• Define and drive platform architecture strategy focused on scalability, modularity, security, and resilience

• Lead platform consolidation and modernization into a unified, extensible architecture

• Champion architecture best practices including domain-driven and event-driven design, and cloud-native principles

• Design secure, extensible API ecosystems for internal and external developers and fintech partners

• Define developer experience standards including sandbox environments, documentation, and onboarding flows

• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Data teams to embed AI/ML, analytics, and personalization into platform capabilities

• Define and enforce standards for API governance, system design, observability, and security

• Evaluate emerging technologies for future adoption

• Collaborate with InfoSec, SRE, and DevOps to ensure reliability, compliance, and operational health

Product Design and Development

• Create and maintain architectural artifacts including solution blueprints, dependency maps, and design specifications

• Collaborate with Portfolio and Product leadership to align technology solutions with strategic business goals

• Establish and enforce technical standards, policies, and guidelines for product teams

• Work with product teams to ensure architectural alignment with product backlogs and technical direction

• Provide technical leadership through mentoring, code reviews, and guidance on architecture principles and design patterns

• Manage architectural risks and dependencies across teams and systems

Product Strategy, Vision, and Planning

• Develop automation and CI/CD strategy and communicate the vision to Product and Engineering Managers

• Advise Product Managers on DevOps enhancements, technical gaps, and product roadmap priorities

• Ensure technical solutions align with DevOps principles through close collaboration with engineering teams

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering and enterprise architecture

• Deep expertise in designing and managing API-first platforms and developer ecosystems

• Experience with fintech and banking standards including ISO 20022, Open Banking, and FDX

• Strong understanding of cloud-native technologies such as GCP, AWS, Kubernetes, containers, and service mesh

• Proficient in distributed systems, multi-tenancy, and event-driven architecture

• Hands-on experience integrating AI/ML into product and platform architecture

• Strong grasp of financial regulatory, security, and data compliance requirements

• Proven leadership in guiding high-performing engineering teams

• Expertise in SRE and DevOps practices including CI/CD tools like GitHub, Jenkins, and Google Cloud Build

• Strong collaboration and communication skills to lead cross-functional initiatives and articulate complex concepts

• Automation-first mindset with a drive to optimize delivery pipelines and eliminate manual processes

Product Specific Qualifications / Skillsets

• Experience in digital banking, core banking, CRM system desirable

• Java, JEE, Spring MVC, Spring Boot, Rest

• React, React Native, Redux

• Hibernate, JPA

• Postgres

• Kafka, Kafka Connect, Redis

Statement to Third Party Agencies

To ALL recruitment agencies: Candescent only accepts resumes from agencies on the preferred supplier list. Please do not forward resumes to our applicant tracking system, Candescent employees, or any Candescent facility. Candescent is not responsible for any fees or charges associated with unsolicited resumes.