Principal Software Engineer

About Fleet Management

Our 30-year journey rides on the passion of over 27,000 seafarers and 1,000 onshore professionals. Today, we are one of the largest independent third-party ship management companies managing over 650+ diverse types of vessels.

Headquartered in Hong Kong SAR, China, we operate on a global scale having 27 offices in 12 countries. Our client base spans over 100 world-class ship owners, including Fortune 500 companies from China, Greece, India, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the USA, among others.

In a shore career at Fleet, you will be working with a team of a highly passionate, self-driven and committed group of people. We aim to be a place where you can achieve your full potential, regardless of your background.

We are looking for individuals who are ambitious about making a strong contribution to Fleet's short and long-term sustainable growth - whether you are dealing directly with clients or working in a role supporting the business, such as technology, legal or communications.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader shaping the architecture and delivery of next-generation maritime technology platforms. You’ll drive the design and development of scalable, resilient, and intelligent applications that enhance ship and shore-based operations globally. Working closely with engineers, product managers, and designers, you’ll leverage modern stacks-React, Node.js and Generative AI-to deliver solutions that set new standards for innovation, performance, and user experience in the maritime domain.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

As a Principal Software Engineer, your typical day includes:

Set the Vision: Architecture & Strategy

• Define and evolve the technical architecture for the PARIS ecosystem, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance across services
• Drive technology selection, standardisation, and modernisation across the engineering organisation
• Partner with product and business leaders to align architectural decisions with long-term product and organisational goals
• Lead design reviews and establish best practices for distributed, event-driven, and microservice architectures
• Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies, including AI, machine learning, and data analytics, to enhance system intelligence and user experience

Technical Leadership & Innovation

• Mentor and coach senior and mid-level engineers, fostering technical excellence and a culture of ownership
• Serve as the technical authority for large-scale system design, complex problem resolution, and performance optimisation
• Spearhead cross-team initiatives in DevOps, observability, and automation, driving efficiency and resilience
• Champion engineering quality through robust design patterns, testability, and maintainable code structures
• Collaborate with infrastructure and cloud teams to optimise cost, performance, and security

Execution & Delivery

• Oversee delivery by doing design and code reviews regularly and ensuring development cells meets the standards and best practices we have set for the organisation
• Ensure system observability, scalability, and performance through proactive monitoring and architectural improvements
• Lead technical risk assessments, capacity planning, and incident response strategies
• Contribute hands-on to critical development when necessary - setting the bar for technical execution

Relationship (mostly Internal and or External) and Nature of Communication

List the internal and external points of interactions that are required of this job.

Internal:

• Software Development Teams (India & Hong Kong)
• Product Management and QA Teams
• Senior Leadership and Architecture Review Board members

External :

• Third-party software vendors
• Answering and helping Vendor development teams

Job Experience, Functional Knowledge and Qualifications

Indicate the minimum and preferred education and experience for this job and any licenses and certifications required.

Essential - You must have this experience

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a technical leadership or principal-level role.
• Proven expertise in full-stack development using modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Node.js, TypeScript) and backend services
• Strong architectural experience in distributed systems, microservices, APIs, and event-driven architectures
• Deep proficiency with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including cost optimisation, CI/CD, and deployment best practices, and disaster recovery / high-availability design.
• Strong understanding of relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB) including backup, replication, and recovery strategies
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence technical direction across teams
• Strong problem-solving and analytical capabilities in high-scale, secure production environments
• Hands-on knowledge of applying Generative AI understanding in day-to-day software development .

Desirable - It would be great if you also have…

• Experience designing or operating Serverless architectures, Kubernetes, and containerised deployments.
• Exposure to enterprise-grade system design, including high-availability, observability, and fault tolerance.
• Contributions to open-source projects or internal developer platforms.
• Experience in the maritime, logistics, or IoT domains is a strong plus.
• Experience leading Agile development at scale (Scrum or Kanban)

Competencies

Indicate the observable behaviours that demonstrate the knowledge, skills and abilities that the employee should have at a particular level.

• Analysis & Problem Solving (3):

Uses a systematic approach to root cause analysis on complex problems to identify underlying trends and put forward well-thought-out solutions to address the causes and reduce risk.

• Listening & Communication (3):

Is effective in communicating his vision with a wider audience. A good communicator knows when to use which channel, and which tone of voice in order to drive maximum impact.

• Collaboration, Inclusion & Teamwork (2):

A good team player that is personable, friendly, polite and takes the time to know people. Helps new colleagues and visitors feel welcome. Mentors and encourages junior members.

• Customer Focus (3):

Proactive in maintaining relationships and managing customer expectations effectively. Takes a partnership approach to solve problems and improve service standards using data to define continuous improvement

• Planning & Organising (2):

Uses the supplied tools for structured project planning for optimal time use. Balances competing priorities. Promptly updates people when plans change and keeps them apprised of progress. Adjusts own plans based on FML strategies and plans.

• Initiative (3):

Always looks for opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness in their own and other peoples work backed by clear rationale and benefits to the business. Role models desired change behaviour and uses external best practice as reference.

• Accountability (3):

Sets high work and ethical standards for self and others including budget management, work quality, timelines. Ensures that tasks and projects within responsibility areas meet promises made. Acknowledges mistakes openly identifying learnings to be applied.

• Resilience & Managing Wellbeing (2):

Manages and responds to workload pressure with an open mind adjusting approach and seeking help when needed and seeking feedback to improve.

• Adaptability (2):

Seeks to understand the rationale for changes at Fleet looking for different perspectives to facilitate and positively contribute to the initiatives within the team and themselves.

Fleet Management Limited is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by local laws.