Principal Software Engineer

Accountabilities: Define and guide architectural decisions that improve application performance, reliability, scalability, maintainability, and security. Lead the development of scalable, secure, cloud-native services across multiple products, technology stacks, and cloud environments. Serve as a senior technical escalation point for complex engineering and production challenges. Develop and maintain enterprise-grade applications primarily using PHP and Laravel, with additional development in C# and modern .NET. Design and operate applications across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, including server-based and serverless environments. Lead modernization initiatives involving application refactoring, cloud migration, monolith decomposition, framework upgrades, and technical debt reduction. Develop highly available cloud solutions using services such as EC2, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, SQS, and CloudFront, along with comparable services in other cloud platforms. Optimize database performance through schema design, indexing, query optimization, caching, and database architecture. Drive adoption of AI agents throughout the engineering lifecycle, including specification-driven development and automated production workflows. Champion clean architecture, Domain-Driven Design, secure coding, specification-driven development, and other engineering best practices. Establish and improve coding standards, testing strategies, deployment processes, observability, monitoring, and application performance practices. Lead architecture reviews, code reviews, design reviews, technical planning, and deployment strategy discussions. Promote continuous deployment practices, feature flags, automation, and reliable release processes. Partner with Product Management to translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions and influence product strategy through technology. Collaborate with Engineering Managers to prioritize technical investments, platform improvements, and long-term technical roadmaps. Mentor engineers at junior, mid-level, and senior levels through coaching, architecture guidance, code reviews, and pair programming. Foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. Lead critical incident response and root cause analysis while improving operational readiness, monitoring, alerting, and system reliability. Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Drive automation across development, testing, deployment, and infrastructure processes. Requirements Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. 10+ years of professional software engineering experience. At least 5 years of experience designing enterprise-scale distributed systems and cloud-native applications. Demonstrated experience in a Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Technical Lead, or comparable senior technical leadership role. Expert-level proficiency in PHP and modern PHP frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony. Strong experience with MySQL or Amazon Aurora MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, RESTful APIs, and web services. Proficiency in C# and modern .NET, including ASP.NET Core and Azure Functions. Deep experience with at least one major cloud provider and working knowledge of another; experience across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud is valuable. Experience with TypeScript and at least one modern frontend framework such as React, Vue, or Angular. Strong background in containerized application development and deployment using Docker, Kubernetes, or comparable technologies. Strong understanding of CI/CD, DevOps, observability, application performance monitoring, and event-driven architectures. Experience designing RESTful APIs, service-oriented architectures, and distributed systems. Strong security knowledge, including OAuth, SSO, API authentication, secrets management, and secure-by-default application design. Expertise in automated testing across unit, integration, API, and end-to-end testing. Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and communicate effectively with diverse stakeholders. Exceptional communication, collaboration, organization, leadership, and problem-solving skills. Preferred experience with church technology, nonprofit SaaS, multi-tenant CMS, or website-builder platforms. Preferred experience with AWS services such as EC2, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, SQS, and CloudFront. Familiarity with video streaming and media pipelines, including AWS MediaLive, MediaPackage, HLS, and transcoding platforms. Experience with high-volume messaging and notification platforms such as Twilio or SendGrid. Familiarity with search technologies including Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or Algolia. Experience administering and optimizing Linux-based web application environments. Experience with infrastructure as code, particularly Terraform and Helm. Familiarity with Microsoft Office 365 applications is a plus. Ability to work effectively in a remote environment and collaborate through Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other digital communication tools. Willingness to travel domestically and/or internationally up to approximately 5%. Benefits Remote work environment. Multiple healthcare options designed to support employees and their families. Flexible paid time off and flexible work schedules. Up to 80 hours of paid sick/safe leave. 11.5 fully paid holidays. 401(k) matching at 100% of employee contributions up to 3%. Paid parental leave. Employee Assistance Program with access to confidential in-person or virtual counseling. Professional development and education reimbursement. Employee recognition and rewards program. Opportunities to work on complex cloud, SaaS, AI, and digital engagement technologies. Supportive environment focused on professional growth, collaboration, and continuous learning.