Position: Principal Software EngineerLocation: McLean, VARole OverviewThe Principal Software Engineer owns end-to-end solution architecture across application, cloud, data, and AI domains, and stays hands-on in the codebase writing production code, building the hardest components, and reviewing the work of the engineering team. Architecture here is proven by building it, not by documenting it. Technical authority comes from setting direction, making the hard calls, shipping alongside the team, and raising the engineering bar through review and mentorship. The role is the most senior technical voice on the project and is accountable for the quality, security, and production readiness of what is delivered.
Key Responsibilities- Act as the technical leader for assigned projects: own the architecture end to end, set technical direction, and make the calls on frameworks, patterns, and trade-offs.
- Stay hands-on in the codebase, personally building the critical-path and highest-risk components rather than delegating them, and validating architecture decisions by implementing them.
- Translate business requirements, product objectives, and operational needs into architecture blueprints and working reference implementations the team can build against.
- Design and build production AI systems, including agent runtimes and orchestration, tool contracts and function calling, retrieval, guardrails and policy enforcement, evaluation harnesses, and the cost and latency controls that make them viable in production.
- Unblock the team: pair on complex problems, debug difficult production issues, and step into whichever layer of the stack is holding delivery up.
- Drive engineering quality through design reviews, code reviews, technical standards, test strategy, and production readiness assessments.
- Design and build secure, resilient, cloud-native solutions on AWS, owning observability, performance, scalability, resilience, and cost-aware design.
- Ensure solutions follow secure-by-design principles and applicable compliance, privacy, and data protection standards, including how sensitive and personal data is handled.
- Collaborate across product, engineering, delivery, security, and client-facing teams, and support client discussions and pre-sales by shaping solution approaches, technology recommendations, and high-level effort estimates.
- Mentor engineers, document architecture decisions and their rationale, and lead knowledge transfer so teams can operate and extend the system independently.
Required Qualifications- 12+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, or technical leadership roles, with strong experience designing and delivering enterprise-grade solutions.
- Currently hands-on: writing and reviewing production code as a regular part of the role, not solely producing designs and documentation.
- Strong proficiency in Python and working proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js, with a track record of clean, well-tested, maintainable code.
- Proven experience in solution architecture across distributed systems, APIs, service-oriented and microservice designs, event-driven and integration patterns, and cloud-native applications.
- Strong hands-on experience with AWS, including compute, storage, networking, security and IAM, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and cost-aware design.
- Hands-on experience building AI-enabled systems in production, including LLM-based applications, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows and tool use, guardrails, and evaluation.
- Working knowledge of data architecture concepts such as data modelling, governance, lineage, and secure data exchange, including support for analytics and AI use cases.
- Experience with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Strong understanding of application and integration architecture, security principles, and non-functional requirements such as scalability, resilience, and performance.
- Experience leading engineering teams technically through design reviews, implementation guidance, and architecture governance, and influencing decisions without formal reporting authority.
- Experience translating business and client requirements into scalable technical designs and architecture roadmaps.
- Ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, and client audiences, and sound judgment in balancing architectural goals against practical delivery needs.
- Experience contributing to technical solutioning for proposals, statements of work, or client-facing solution discussions.
Preferred Qualifications- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
- AWS certification such as Solutions Architect Professional.
- Exposure to architecture and compliance considerations in regulated environments, including privacy, security, and audit controls.
- Experience in consulting, client delivery, or technical pre-sales environments.
