Principal Backend Architect for Autonomy & Digital Twin

Caterpillar Brazil; Irving (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Paid time off

401(k) savings plan

Health Savings Account (HSA)

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)

Career Development

Incentive bonus

Disability benefits

Life Insurance

Parental leave

Job summary

Caterpillar is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead architecture and integration strategies for Physical AI services, digital twin integration, and cloud-native backend platforms. The role focuses on building scalable microservices and APIs using Java, Spring Boot, and Python, with emphasis on REST, gRPC, and event-driven patterns.

You will mentor engineers, drive standards across teams, and ensure secure, high-performance solutions with strong observability.

Qualifications

• Strong experience building backend microservices and APIs (REST, gRPC, event-driven) for autonomy or real-time systems.
• Experience in autonomy systems, robotics, simulation, or real-time control platforms.
• Expertise in cloud-native architectures, service contracts, and integration patterns.
• Strong backend development using Java or Python for APIs, orchestration, and data processing.
• Deep understanding of design patterns and high-reliability systems (observability, retries, idempotency).

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership to define architecture and integration strategies for Physical AI services, digital twin integration, simulation data exchange, and cloud-native backend platforms.
• Build scalable microservices and APIs, establish engineering standards and drive platform consistency across teams.
• Define and drive architecture for backend microservices and APIs (Java, Spring Boot, Python) supporting integration, data exchange, and platform services.
• Lead design and delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performance cloud-native services and integration adapters.
• Establish and enforce API standards, service contracts, and integration patterns (REST, gRPC, event-driven) across distributed systems.
• Provide technical leadership on complex system design, service scalability, and integration challenges.
• Review architecture, designs, code, APIs, and data contracts to ensure reliability, performance, security, observability, and maintainability.
• Drive engineering excellence across architecture, testing, CI/CD, observability, and operational readiness.
• Mentor engineers and elevate team capability in microservices design, API development, and backend engineering best practices.
• Guide teams in building robust integration services, adapter layers, and artifact/data exchange workflows.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define API interfaces, integration contracts, and platform service boundaries.
• Identify and drive platform simplification, reuse, and organizational efficiency improvements.

Skills

Backend architecture

API design

Java

Python

Spring Boot

REST, gRPC

Cloud-native

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Spring Boot

Java

Python

REST

gRPC

Job description

Caterpillar is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead architecture and integration strategies for Physical AI services, digital twin integration, and cloud-native backend platforms. The role focuses on building scalable microservices and APIs using Java, Spring Boot, and Python, with emphasis on REST, gRPC, and event-driven patterns.

You will mentor engineers, drive standards across teams, and ensure secure, high-performance solutions with strong observability.