Principal Engineer - Product Development
First seen by Alion on Oct 22, 2026.
Role Overview :
We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as a premier technical authority and visionary within Phenom's AI-driven talent experience platform.
In this role, you will bridge the gap between high-level product strategy and deep technical execution.
You will own the technical roadmap, architectural integrity, and scalability of core platform capabilities used by global enterprise customers.
As a hands-on technical leader, you will solve highly complex, ambiguous problems while mentoring senior engineering talent and driving engineering excellence across cross-functional teams.
What You'll Do :
Architect Scalable Systems & AI Infrastructures :
- Own the long-term technical roadmap, architecture, and design specifications for complex enterprise SaaS products, subsystems, and product families.
- Design and build highly secure, fault-tolerant, and large-scale distributed systems that power our platform infrastructure.
- Lead architecture discussions, guide microservices-based cloud-native designs, and establish patterns for complex data processing.
Lead Engineering & Technical Execution :
- Drive end-to-end technical execution of high-impact engineering initiatives, transforming vague product requirements into scalable technical realities.
- Drive rigorous engineering best practices in code quality, comprehensive system testing, deep observability, and long-term system reliability.
- Tackle and resolve the platform's most complex, ambiguous technical problems, performing root-cause investigations on critical architectural bottlenecks.
Influence Platform Innovation & Strategy :
- Contribute directly to platform-wide architecture, core technical frameworks, and company-wide engineering strategy.
- Identify opportunities to abstract complexities into reusable services, creating technical leverage across multiple engineering product lines.
- Keep Phenom at the forefront of technology by investigating novel engineering methodologies, prototyping AI capabilities, and evaluating data frameworks.
Technical Mentorship & Collaboration :
- Actively coach, mentor, and elevate senior and staff engineers, fostering a culture of continuous technical growth and psychological safety.
- Partner closely with Product Management, Technical Program Management, and cross-functional engineering leaders to deliver impactful capabilities.
- Act as a technical liaison, translating complex systems constraints into clear, actionable updates for non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership.
What We're Looking For :
- 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience within product development organizations.
- 4+ years operating in a Principal, Architect, or high-level Staff Engineer capacity with visible impact across multiple teams or platforms.
- Master-level proficiency in designing, building, and benchmarking large-scale distributed systems.
- Strong backend development experience in Java or similar enterprise-grade languages.
- Proven experience building and scaling cloud-native, microservices-based architectures on AWS or Azure.
- Deep expertise working with distributed data systems and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB or similar.
- Exceptional system design skills with a data-driven mindset toward performance, security, and scalability targets.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a proven track record of influencing technical direction without direct authority.
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams in fast-paced, high-growth AI or enterprise SaaS environments.
Education :
- A bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical field is required.
Skills
System Architect, Java, Distributed Systems, Cloud, AWS, NoSQL, MongoDB, System Design