Principal Software Engineer

Requirements:

• 7+ years of professional software development experience, with substantial depth in backend and distributed systems engineering.
• Expert-level proficiency in at least one modern programming language (Python, Java, C#, Go, or similar); demonstrable ability to work across languages and adapt rapidly to new technology contexts.
• Expert-level knowledge of relational and NoSQL data stores (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis); experience with query optimization, schema design for high-throughput systems, and data migration strategies.
• Proven experience designing and governing RESTful and event-driven APIs at platform scale; experience with API versioning, backward compatibility, and deprecation strategies.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architecture on at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP); experience with multi-region, high-availability, and cost-optimized designs.
• Hands-on experience owning and evolving CI/CD platforms, deployment strategies (blue/green, canary, feature flags), and production observability (tracing, metrics, alerting).
• Strong experience with containerization and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) in production environments.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems design, consistency models, fault tolerance, event-driven architecture, microservices, and service mesh patterns.
• Demonstrated record of leading end-to-end delivery of complex, high-impact technical initiatives from ambiguous requirements through production at scale.
• Demonstrated performance engineering expertise in profiling, load testing, capacity planning, and tuning at scale.
• Security engineering depth: threat modelling, secure design reviews, knowledge of relevant vulnerability classes, and experience with regulated/compliant systems.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers effectively and grow technical capability within a team.
• Experience with payment processing systems, financial transactions, or financial services domain; solid understanding of transaction lifecycle, settlement, reconciliation, and compliance requirements.
• Working knowledge of PCI-DSS and relevant payment industry security standards; experience ensuring platform compliance.
• Strong ability to integrate AI/ML capabilities into production systems; able to define standards and evaluate AI components for production readiness, safety, and risk in a payments context.

Good to have skills:

• Experience with foreign exchange systems, capital markets infrastructure, or complex financial instrument processing.
• Hands-on experience building, deploying, and operating ML models (fraud detection, risk scoring, and anomaly detection) in production payment environments.
• Experience with LLM integration patterns, prompt engineering, RAG architectures, or AI agent frameworks at a production scale.
• Advanced knowledge of message streaming and event sourcing patterns (Kafka, Flink, and event-driven architecture at scale).
• Contributions to open-source projects, technical publications, or conference presentations.
• Experience in a formal technical lead or staff engineer capacity.