Principal Engineer - System Design & Architecture
First seen by Alion on Nov 5, 2026.
Role : Principal Engineer
Industry : Fintech / Digital Lending
Experience : 12-18+ Years
Employment Type : Full-time
About the Role :
We are looking for an experienced Principal Engineer to lead the re-architecture of core engineering services and build the foundation for an AI-native lending platform.
The role involves designing scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems that enable both humans and AI agents to interact with critical lending workflows while ensuring data integrity, auditability, and business continuity.
Key Responsibilities :
- Lead the re-architecture of core engineering services and define long-term system architecture.
- Design clear domain boundaries, service ownership, and scalable microservices.
- Establish contract-driven engineering practices across APIs, events, schemas, and data models.
- Ensure transaction integrity, data consistency, and reliability across distributed systems.
- Lead the migration of business-critical financial workflows without disrupting live operations.
- Build secure frameworks for AI agents to interact with core business systems.
- Define deterministic guardrails, permissions, validations, and audit mechanisms for AI-driven actions.
- Drive technical strategy, architecture reviews, and engineering best practices.
Required Skills & Experience
- 12-18+ years of experience in software engineering and system architecture.
- Proven experience leading large-scale re-architecture of business-critical platforms.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems, microservices, and Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
- Hands-on experience with API-first and contract-driven architecture.
- Strong understanding of event-driven systems, data consistency, and transaction processing.
- Experience with financial systems, lending platforms, payments, or ledger-based systems.
- Exposure to AI/LLM integration, AI agents, and AI-native architecture.
- Strong technical leadership and hands-on engineering capabilities.
Preferred Background :
- Experience in Fintech, Banking, Digital Lending, Payments, or other high-volume transaction-driven platforms.
Ideal Candidate :
- A hands-on engineering leader who has successfully re-architected large-scale production systems and can build reliable, auditable, and scalable platforms for AI-driven financial services.
Work Mode : Work from office, 5 days a week.
Education : Graduates of Tier 1 institutions.
Skills
System Design, System Architecture, Distributed Systems, Microservices Architecture, Backend Architecture