Principal Application Engineer (SRE)

Discover Financial Services; Riverwoods (IL); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company where you can make a meaningful impact from day one. This role offers the opportunity to create innovative technology solutions that address critical business priorities while collaborating with diverse teams. You'll leverage your extensive experience in software engineering and IT to drive strategic technology decisions, enhance system resilience, and lead incident management efforts. If you're passionate about automation, security, and developing high-quality solutions, this is the perfect opportunity to advance your career in a dynamic environment that values your unique contributions.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in Information Technology or Software Engineering.
• Strong coding skills in Python and Java with automation experience.

Responsibilities

• Create technology solutions for high-impact business priorities.
• Coach technology communities in agile development and security.

Skills

Python

Java

Linux

Automation

SQL

NoSQL

Security

Incident Management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

OpenShift

Jenkins

GitLab

Splunk

Datadog

Job description

With us, you’ll do meaningful work from Day 1. Our collaborative culture is built on three core behaviors: We Play to Win, We Get Better Every Day & We Succeed Together. We value what makes you unique so that you have an opportunity to shine.

Come build your future, while being the reason millions of people find a brighter financial future with Discover.

Job Description:

What You’ll Do

Utilize a broad range of high-impact software solutions, working intuitively. Speed derives from intuition. You’ll handle complex tasks, such as (re)design, and spend more time documenting than coding.

How You’ll Do It

• Create technology solutions that address high-impact business priorities, demonstrating the ability to analyze, design, code, test, and deploy solutions and features with high quality.
• Be competent in multiple technical domains, including programming languages, security, automation, testing, and business domains, serving as a go-to person beyond your immediate team.
• Participate in strategic technology decisions, understanding their impact on Discover.
• Proactively identify and mitigate issues using intuition and experience, driving problem-solving efforts and root cause analysis.
• Coach technology communities at Discover in areas such as specific technology domains, design-thinking, agile development, security, architecture, and data engineering.

Minimum Qualifications

At a minimum, we need:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Informatics, Information Security, Information Technology, or related fields.
• 6+ years of experience in Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related areas.
• Internal applicants: technical proficiency rating of proficient on the Dreyfus engineering scale.

Physical and Cognitive Requirements

These include remaining stationary, operating office equipment, and working primarily indoors. Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by law.

Preferred Qualifications

Bonus points if you have:

• Strong coding skills in Python and Java, with automation experience.
• Deep Linux knowledge, especially RHEL, including performance tuning and troubleshooting.
• Experience with SAN, NAS, NFS, object-oriented solutions for low-latency applications.
• Familiarity with distributed data systems like Hadoop, Kafka/Nifi for real-time processing.
• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform or Ansible.
• Understanding of AWS and on-prem infrastructure, AWS Solution Architect certification preferred.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift in regulated environments.
• Knowledge of CI/CD tools like Jenkins, GitLab, with compliance controls.
• Experience with observability tools such as Splunk, Datadog.
• Proven leadership in incident response, disaster recovery, and system resilience.
• Experience with low-latency, high-throughput payment systems.
• Expertise in SQL and NoSQL databases with strong consistency needs.
• Strong understanding of security, encryption, IAM, firewalls, and compliance standards.

Compliance Skills

• Familiarity with financial regulations such as SOX, PCI DSS, FFIEC.
• Experience with risk management frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST.
• Skills in audit logging, security event monitoring, data governance, and disaster recovery.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Ability to lead incident management during outages.
• Effective stakeholder communication with compliance, security, and business teams.
• Define and manage SLA/SLOs for transaction processing.
• Drive cost efficiency and risk management in cloud and infrastructure.
• Automate processes to improve efficiency and compliance.
• Lead technical initiatives, collaborating across teams to align goals with business priorities.

External applicants will undergo a technical interview. Discover will not sponsor or transfer visas; applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. on a full-time basis.