Cloud-Native Principal Engineer — Federal Modernization

Stackular; Bethesda (MD); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Stackular in Bethesda is seeking a hands-on Principal Software Engineer to lead cross-stack modernization on a NIH federal research project. The role blends coding with architectural guidance across .NET/Oracle/SAP migrations to AWS, microservices, and a federated GraphQL API layer with a React/TypeScript frontend.

You will review architecture, shape data strategies, and mentor DevSecOps teams, delivering secure, operable systems while maintaining strong collaboration with stakeholders and

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience as technical lead, staff engineer, or principal engineer on production cloud systems.
• Ability to reason across full stack and assess cross-boundary changes.
• Experience with distributed systems and microservices architecture.
• Strong Python and React/TypeScript proficiency.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across modernization engineering efforts.
• Review pull requests across the stack for risk, design, data impact, and security.
• Enforce consistent engineering patterns for APIs, services, and deployment.
• Mentor engineers on cloud-native delivery, observability, and secure development.
• Translate architecture and security guidance into practical implementation advice.

Skills

Cross-functional leadership

Mentoring engineers

Strong communication

Security-conscious

Problem solving

Tools

GraphQL

React

TypeScript

FastAPI

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

AWS (EKS, RDS, S3)

PostgreSQL

Apollo Federation

CI/CD automation

Job description

Stackular in Bethesda is seeking a hands-on Principal Software Engineer to lead cross-stack modernization on a NIH federal research project. The role blends coding with architectural guidance across .NET/Oracle/SAP migrations to AWS, microservices, and a federated GraphQL API layer with a React/TypeScript frontend.

You will review architecture, shape data strategies, and mentor DevSecOps teams, delivering secure, operable systems while maintaining strong collaboration with stakeholders and