Principal Application Developer

Description

The Principal Application Developer is the highest-level individual contributor in the Application Development career family and serves as a technical authority across applications, products, and development teams. The role establishes architecture direction, reusable engineering patterns, and practical governance for secure, scalable, maintainable software. The Principal Application Developer defines how approved AI-assisted development strengthens delivery while preserving software quality, traceability, security, privacy, and human accountability.

Essential Job Functions

• Establish technical direction and reference architectures for major applications, shared services, integrations, and modernization initiatives.
• Lead architectural decisions involving application structure, APIs, data, cloud services, integration, security, scalability, reliability, and operational support.
• Define and maintain architecture standards, approved design patterns, technical roadmaps, and development frameworks.
• Evaluate and approve technical designs for high-complexity projects and cross-product initiatives.
• Balance feature delivery, modernization, technical debt, security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational priorities.
• Define standards for requirements traceability, technical design, implementation, automated testing, technical documentation, and production readiness.
• Lead architecture reviews, resolve complex technical disagreements, and communicate decisions and tradeoffs to technical and business leaders.
• Identify systemic technical risk and lead or sponsor high-impact remediation, incident investigation, and recovery efforts.
• Research and evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks, platforms, and engineering practices and recommend adoption, limits, pilots, or rejection.
• Mentor Application Developers and Senior Application Developers and develop technical leadership capability across the team.
• Collaborate with IT leadership, product and business leaders, security, infrastructure, privacy, legal, compliance, and other stakeholders on technology strategy and risk.
• Influence technical direction across teams without relying on direct supervisory authority.

AI-Enabled Development Expectations

• Define approved patterns and guardrails for AI-assisted requirements, design, coding, testing, documentation, technical review, and knowledge use.
• Establish human review and approval points for AI-generated engineering artifacts based on solution risk, data sensitivity, business impact, and practical reviewability.
• Evaluate AI development tools, coding agents, models, integrations, and context sources for business value, architecture fit, security, privacy, interoperability, maintainability, and operational risk.
• Define how trusted business rules, technical standards, repository context, and architecture information may be presented to approved AI systems.
• Establish reusable instructions, reference implementations, validation controls, traceability expectations, and quality measures for AI-assisted delivery.
• Identify risks involving incorrect business logic, insecure code, unsupported assumptions, intellectual property, inadequate testing, sensitive data, or excessive automation.
• Determine when AI is appropriate, when traditional engineering methods should be used, and when an AI-assisted approach should be limited or stopped.
• Promote incremental, reviewable, testable AI-assisted delivery and ensure authorized employees retain final ownership of designs, code, releases, and decisions.

Required Qualifications

• Expert knowledge of enterprise application architecture, software engineering, integration, security, testing, DevOps, operational reliability, and technical-debt management.
• Extensive experience with Microsoft application technologies, including .NET, C#, SQL Server, APIs, cloud services, and modern web-development practices.
• Demonstrated experience setting technical direction, architecture standards, and governance across multiple applications, products, or teams.
• Proven experience leading architectural decisions, modernization efforts, complex technical investigations, and long-term roadmaps.
• Ability to evaluate technical risk, make decisions with incomplete information, and communicate tradeoffs to senior technical and business leaders.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across teams and develop other technical leaders without direct supervisory authority.
• Demonstrated expertise designing, evaluating, or governing AI-augmented engineering workflows with human-in-the-loop review.
• Degree, relevant technical certification, or equivalent depth of directly related experience sufficient to perform the responsibilities of the role.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Azure architecture, distributed systems, microservices, API governance, application security, observability, platform engineering, and automated quality controls.
• Experience in healthcare, insurance, cost containment, regulated data environments, healthcare billing, or X12 integrations.
• Experience evaluating development platforms, vendors, licensing, and enterprise technology investments.

Core Competencies

• Enterprise systems thinking and long-range technical judgment.
• Architecture leadership, governance discipline, and responsible innovation.
• Executive-level communication and ability to translate technical opportunities and risks.
• Ability to create alignment across teams, products, and stakeholders.
• Commitment to measurable quality, secure delivery, and human accountability.

Scope and Decision Authority

• Influences multiple applications, products, services, and development teams.
• Makes high-impact architectural recommendations with long-term business and technical consequences.
• Defines standards and patterns used beyond a single delivery team.
• Serves as a technical authority for architecture, modernization, engineering quality, and AI-augmented development.
• Escalates material enterprise risk and recommends exceptions through authorized governance channels.

Responsible AI and Human Accountability

This position may use only organization-approved AI tools, data connections, and development practices. The employee must review, test, document, and validate AI-assisted work before use or release and remains accountable for correctness, security, privacy, maintainability, intellectual-property considerations, business alignment, and final decisions. Sensitive or regulated information may be used only within systems approved for that information. Material uncertainty, unexpected behavior, security concerns, or policy conflicts must be escalated through approved channels.

Benefits

• Medical Insurance
• Dental and Vision Insurance
• Company-paid short-term & long-term disability
• Company-paid group term life insurance
• Generous PTO Policy
• Employee recognition programs
• Corporate office amenities
• Frequent employee events

About Prime Health Services

Prime Health Services (PHS) is a national medical cost containment company specializing in customized PPO network solutions. Since 2001, we’ve partnered with insurance carriers, TPAs, self-insured groups, and government entities to deliver high-quality healthcare access at discounted rates. Our technology-driven approach allows us to provide fast, flexible, and dependable service to our clients while supporting a collaborative, employee-focused workplace.