GENERAL FUNCTIONThe Principal Software Engineer serves as a senior technical leader responsible for driving architectural direction, engineering excellence, and cross-squad technical coordination across multiple domains. This role designs and oversees implementation of complex, scalable systems while mentoring engineering teams, shaping engineering standards, and ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture.
The Principal Software Engineer partners with product owners, architects, and engineering leadership to guide solution design, improve engineering practices, and support strategic technology initiatives. This role works across squads to solve complex multi-team challenges, rapidly assess unfamiliar systems, and provide technical continuity across efforts.
This position is accountable for following all policies, procedures, security controls, and risk frameworks while maintaining a strong customer-first mindset and supporting high-quality delivery across teams.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIESTechnical Architecture & Delivery- Lead design and implementation of complex, scalable software solutions across multiple squads and domains.
- Influence and contribute to enterprise architecture to ensure systems are secure, scalable, reliable, and aligned with organizational strategy.
- Create or extend architecture diagrams, sequence diagrams, and technical flows to support solution design across domains.
- Provide architectural guidance to squads, helping teams evaluate trade-offs and make sound technical decisions.
- Serve as the Tech Lead for a development squad when needed, guiding technical execution and ensuring alignment with architectural standards.
Engineering Excellence- Drive and uphold engineering standards across the development practice, ensuring consistency, code quality, observability maturity, and best practices adoption.
- Proactively identify gaps in engineering standards, patterns, or tools; work across teams to define and implement improvements.
- Mentor engineers across squads and job levels, elevating overall technical capability.
- Rapidly assess unfamiliar codebases or systems to assist with troubleshooting, architecture evolution, or accelerated delivery.
- Champion modern engineering methodologies, including microservices, cloud-native design, CI/CD automation, and domain-driven architecture.
Cross-Squad Technical Leadership- Act as a trusted leader within the Chapter, helping shape strategic direction and serving as a go-to expert for engineers and leads.
- Provide technical continuity across squads during transitions, escalations, or delivery challenges.
- Guide cross-functional teams through complex, multi-squad problem solving and technical decision-making.
- Act as a stabilizing force during production incidents or outages, supporting recovery efforts across teams.
Observability & Operational Excellence- Drive observability standards across squads, ensuring consistent logging, metrics, dashboards, and alerting practices.
- Collaborate with SRE and monitoring teams to define critical metrics, logging schemas, and operational visibility standards.
- Promote reliability engineering practices and ensure operational readiness for all delivered solutions.
AI-Assisted Engineering Leadership- Define and evolve team-wide standards for AI-assisted development.
- Evaluate AI tooling (including Copilot) for alignment with longer-term architectural goals and engineering quality.
- Mentor Leads and Senior Engineers on using AI responsibly while maintaining developer growth and architectural integrity.
- Ensure AI use supports strategic platform direction (e.g., OpenShift, microservices, automation, observability).
Compliance, Training & Continuous Learning- Maintain required documentation, architectural decisions, and compliance artifacts.
- Complete all required training and HR documentation without reminders.
- Stay current with emerging technologies and industry best practices.
MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES REQUIREDHard Skills- Expert-level proficiency in software architecture, system design, and integration patterns.
- Deep experience with cloud-native development using AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, VPC).
- Strong command of backend frameworks: Java / Spring Boot and JavaScript / NodeJS.
- Advanced knowledge of microservices, domain-driven design, and event-driven architecture.
- Skilled with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, and artifact management via JFrog Artifactory.
- Expertise with observability platforms such as Splunk and Dynatrace, including metric design, logging strategies, and cross-system dashboards.
- Strong understanding of security, compliance, and performance optimization practices.
Soft Skills- Excellent communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences-including executives.
- Highly collaborative across squads, departments, and external partners.
- Adaptable and resilient, able to pivot quickly in fast-changing business and technology environments.
- Proactive mentor and coach who elevates others.
- Strong advocate for continuous improvement and innovation.
Problem Solving- Solves complex technical problems spanning multiple squads, domains, or systems.
- Able to quickly diagnose issues in unfamiliar codebases and lead resolution efforts.
Leadership- Drives architectural design and technical strategy across squads.
- Leads by example in engineering standards, communities of practice, and cross-squad initiatives.
- Mentors engineers across job families, fostering a culture of growth and excellence.
- Acts as a servant leader focused on enabling teams to make strong technical decisions.
- Demonstrates exceptional situational awareness and adaptability, providing immediate value in new or challenging environments.
- Acts as a stabilizing force during outages, escalations, or delivery challenges.
- Serves as a primary technical liaison with Product, Architecture, and engineering leadership.
Principle Software Engineer - Service Development
The base salary for this position is reflective of the range of salary levels for all roles within this pay grade across the U.S. Individual salaries within this range will vary based on factors such as role, relevant skillset, relevant experience, education and geographic location. In addition to the base salary, this role is eligible to participate in an incentive compensation plan, with any such payment based upon company, line of business and/or individual performance.
Our extensive benefits programs are designed to support the individual needs of our employees and their families, encompassing physical, financial, emotional and social well-being. You can learn more about those programs on our 53.com Careers page at: https://www.53.com/content/fifth-third/en/careers/benefits.html or by consulting with your talent acquisition partner.
LOCATION -- Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Attention search firms and staffing agencies: do not submit unsolicited resumes for this posting. Fifth Third does not accept resumes from any agency that does not have an active agreement with Fifth Third. Any unsolicited resumes - no matter how they are submitted - will be considered the property of Fifth Third and Fifth Third will not be responsible for any associated fee.
