Principal Software Engineer

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own We have a flexible work environment and fluid career paths We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility We also recognize the importance of purpose well-being and work-life balance Within Empower and our communities we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom Empower Yourself Principal Engineer Software - Scheduling Platform Empower s Scheduling team powers the scheduling platform that welcomes new prospects transitions them into valued clients and sustains a close relationship between clients and their personal advisors through well timed calls and meetings As a Principal Engineer you will own the design evolution and quality of these mission critical micro-services while guiding a cross-functional squad toward cloud-native test-driven excellence This role blends deep hands-on coding with technical leadership helping us modernize legacy code harden our AWS infrastructure and set gold-standard engineering practices across the company Key Responsibilities Design build and continuously refactor Java Spring Boot services that move money and orchestrate scheduling workflows Champion test-driven development clean code and definition of done standards Architect cloud-native solutions on AWS Lambda API Gateway DynamoDB SQS FIFO Kinesis IAM and define infrastructure as code in Terraform or CloudFormation Mentor engineers by leading design reviews pairing sessions and documentation efforts setting the tone as a self-starter healthy disruptor and model of accountability Collaborate with Product SRE and InfoSec teams to translate ambiguous requirements into secure performant APIs Qualifications Experience 10 years of backend engineering including 2 years in a principal or lead role delivering complex distributed systems at scale Leadership behavior Proven accountability follow-through and habit of documenting and driving adoption of best practices comfortable challenging the status quo and leading by example Java expertise Mastery of Java and Spring Boot data structures concurrency profiling and robust testing AWS proficiency Hands-on depth with DynamoDB Lambda API Gateway SQS FIFO Kinesis and IAM roles policies Infrastructure as code Strong with Terraform or CloudFormation for repeatable auditable environments Containers orchestration Advanced Dockerfile skills working knowledge of Kubernetes tuning and operations CI CD DevSecOps Jenkins or GitLab CI pipeline design integrating functional tests static analysis vulnerability scanning and performance testing Quality mindset Deep understanding of unit integration UI E2E and BDD Cucumber testing plus secure PII-free logging and performance monitoring Splunk familiarity is a plus Nice-to-haves Experience modernizing monoliths to event-driven architectures advanced Kubernetes operators service meshes and a background in financial-services or other regulated industries This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties responsibilities and qualifications of the job The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time You will be evaluated in part based on your performance of the responsibilities and or tasks listed in this job description You may be required perform other duties that are not included on this job description The job description is not a contract for employment and either you or the employer may terminate employment at any time for any reason We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity All individuals regardless of personal characteristics are encouraged to apply All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age race color national origin ancestry sex sexual orientation gender gender identity gender expression marital status pregnancy religion physical or mental disability military or veteran status genetic information or any other status protected by applicable state or local law