Principal Software Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Principal Software Engineer based in India.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will shape the technical strategy, architecture, and long-term evolution of critical, large-scale systems. You will influence organization-wide engineering decisions and help align multiple teams around scalable, secure, and maintainable technology. The role combines deep technical expertise with strategic leadership across distributed systems, cloud platforms, modernization, and reliability. You will play a key role in advancing AI-assisted development practices and AI-enabled capabilities. Working across complex technical and business domains, you will drive initiatives that have broad organizational impact. You will also mentor senior engineers and help establish a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and high technical standards.

Accountabilities:

• Lead the design, architecture, and continuous evolution of large-scale distributed systems and cloud-based platforms.
• Define and drive long-term technical strategies that align engineering priorities with broader business and product objectives.
• Establish architectural principles, engineering standards, and best practices that promote scalability, consistency, maintainability, and technical quality.
• Drive the strategic adoption of AI-assisted software development practices and AI-enabled capabilities across engineering teams.
• Lead complex cross-functional and cross-organizational initiatives spanning multiple systems, technical domains, and business areas.
• Identify systemic technical risks and lead modernization, technical debt reduction, and architectural improvement initiatives.
• Advance reliability, scalability, performance, observability, security, and operational maturity across critical systems.
• Influence senior technical and business stakeholders to establish alignment on major architectural and engineering decisions, even without direct authority.
• Mentor senior and principal-level engineers while promoting strong technical standards, engineering excellence, and knowledge sharing.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, including a demonstrated track record of defining and driving technical strategy at an organizational or company-wide level.
• Deep experience designing, building, and evolving large-scale distributed systems and cloud-based platform architectures.
• Strong hands-on experience with public cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, along with modern cloud-native architecture patterns.
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and create technical alignment across multiple teams and organizations without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Experience with .NET full-stack and API development across frontend and backend technologies is preferred.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Rust, C#, or JavaScript.
• Experience with microservices, Docker, Kubernetes, serverless architectures, and infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform, Pulumi, or Bicep.
• Strong understanding of modern authentication and authorization technologies, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and SAML.
• Deep knowledge of observability, monitoring, distributed tracing, reliability engineering, and operational best practices.
• Experience with CI/CD platforms, automated testing, progressive deployment strategies, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong understanding of secure software engineering, including secure coding, threat modeling, vulnerability remediation, and modern application security practices.
• Strong communication, strategic thinking, technical leadership, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to operate effectively in complex and highly collaborative environments.

Benefits

• Opportunity to shape technical strategy and architecture across large-scale, business-critical systems.
• Broad organizational influence across multiple engineering teams, platforms, and technical domains.
• Exposure to modern distributed systems, cloud-native technologies, AI-assisted engineering, and platform modernization initiatives.
• Opportunity to lead high-impact technical programs and solve complex engineering challenges at scale.
• Strong platform for mentoring senior technical talent and contributing to engineering standards and best practices.
• Collaborative environment focused on innovation, accountability, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
• India-based opportunity with the compensation package, healthcare coverage, leave policies, flexibility, and other employment benefits determined by the hiring company and discussed during the recruitment process.