Principal Engineer Data Integration Platforms

MetLif; Cary (NC); Hybrid; USD 135,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with employer matching

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Tuition assistance

Parental leave

Paid time off

Job summary

MetLife’s Global Technology team is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive direction for data transformation and transmission services. You will own end-to-end implementation, support, and continuous improvement across a portfolio of data integration technologies while partnering with executives and business stakeholders.

You will guide modernization efforts, improve resiliency and automation, and help set engineering standards across distributed environments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering and data integration.
• Ability to communicate complex technical topics to diverse audiences in business terms.
• Experience guiding senior technical decisions and modernization practices without direct people management.

Responsibilities

• Define infrastructure-level strategy and modernization patterns for data integration capabilities.
• Provide guidance on reliability risks, resilience patterns, and remediation plans.
• Oversee application infrastructure maintenance, security, and observability across distributed resources.
• Collaborate with stakeholders, product owners, architects, project managers, vendors and teams; translate tech concepts clearly.
• Coordinate with capacity, middleware, databases, cloud, security, and SRE teams to align with roadmaps.
• Set enterprise engineering patterns for data integration services and interfaces with other teams.
• Establish automation standards and influence tooling direction for core infrastructure.
• Create enterprise reference materials on patterns, standards and operations.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Effective communication

Technical leadership

Executive stakeholder management

Tools

Informatica IICS

Azure Data Factory

Databricks

Bash

PowerShell

Python

Java

Chef

Ansible

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

When you join MetLife’s Global Technology team, you’ll be part of a forward-thinking group dedicated to shaping the future of digital solutions for customers worldwide. You’ll develop, maintain and support technology applications and delivery, leveraging AI, automation, and contemporary ways of working to enhance experiences and drive business outcomes. Your work will simplify complex processes, improve tech resiliency, and ensure high-performing, seamless solutions that power life’s most important moments. In this dynamic environment, you’ll collaborate with talented peers across teams and functions, expanding your skills in impactful ways. Ready to push boundaries and set new industry standards? Join us and help drive the future of technology forward.

The Opportunity

As a Principal Engineer for MetLife’s Data Integration Platform Team, you will set the direction for how Global Technology delivers data transformation and transmission solutions to our customers. In this role you will be accountable for infrastructure engineering outcomes across a portfolio of data integration services. You will be responsible for advancing the resiliency, automation, and modernization within these technologies. Your expertise will help align the team with our strategic objectives, including providing end-to-end ownership of technical solutions through implementation, ongoing support, and continuous improvement. Furthermore, you will be the ambassador for these technologies to our partners within MetLife Business, Application Development, and Executive Leadership.

Key Responsibilities

• Define infrastructure-level technical strategy, modernization patterns, and engineering practices for complex or business-critical data integration capabilities; maintain industry currency in knowledge of emerging technologies.
• Provide expert guidance on systemic data infrastructure reliability risks, resilience patterns, and enterprise remediation plans.
• Oversee application infrastructure maintenance, security, and observability across geographically dispersed resources, while understanding the risk and business impacts for all work performed.
• Partner effectively with business stakeholders, product owners, architects, project managers, vendors, and engineering teams, while communicating complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Coordinate closely with capacity management, middleware, database, cloud, security, and SRE teams to ensure platform capabilities align with business needs, architectural standards, and technology roadmaps.
• Set enterprise engineering patterns for core data integration services, clarifying interfaces with Infrastructure, Business, and Data Management teams
• Establish data integration infrastructure automation standards and influence tooling direction for core infrastructure engineering.
• Create enterprise reference materials on infrastructure patterns, standards, and operational learning.

Required Qualifications

• 10 + years of overall experience.
• Proven ability to think strategically and effectively communicate solutions to other individual contributors, customers, and management.
• Experience guiding senior technical decisions and shaping modernization practices across teams or domains without direct people management accountability.
• Experience partnering with senior executives and translating technical topics into business-relevant insights.
• Demonstrated expertise in platform engineering for highly available Enterprise data management and integration products.
• Demonstrated technical leadership experience in Production support for extract-transform-load (ETL), data engineering, change data capture (CDC) or similar data integration products.
• Experience working with cloud-based data integration technologies (i.e. Informatica Intelligent Cloud, Azure Data Factory, Databricks).
• Experience in design and development of Automation/Scripting or infrastructure-as-code tooling (i.e. Bash, Perl, PowerShell, Python, Java, Chef, Ansible).
• Strong familiarity with modern observability platforms and practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Informatica Product suite: PowerCenter, PowerExchange, Data Quality, Data Engineering, B2B Data Exchange, or Master Data Management.
• Experience with hybrid cloud strategies, particularly integrating on-premises platforms with public cloud services (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services).
• Demonstrated success modernizing legacy platforms while maintaining operational stability.
• Track record of building durable platforms and teams that scale, adapt, and continuously improve.
• Exposure to modern AI concepts such as generative AI and machine learning.
• Experience with platforms like Claude AI, Copilot Studio, or similar ecosystems.
• Exposure to RDBMS (MSSQL, Oracle) and DB2 technologies.
• Experience with observability tools - elastic, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry.

Location Expectation: This is a hybrid role requiring a minimum of 3 days per week in office.

The expected salary range for this position is $135,000 - $180,000. This role may also be eligible for annual short-term incentive compensation. All incentives and benefits are subject to the applicable plan terms.

Benefits We Offer

Our U.S. benefits address holistic well-being with programs for physical and mental health, financial wellness, and support for families. We offer a comprehensive health plan that includes medical/prescription drug and vision, dental insurance, and no-cost short- and long-term disability. We also provide company-paid life insurance and legal services, a retirement pension funded entirely by MetLife and 401(k) with employer matching, group discounts on voluntary insurance products including auto and home, pet, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident insurance, as well as Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and digital mental health programs, parental leave, paid time off, paid holidays, volunteer time off, tuition assistance and much more! For more information regarding MetLife’s U.S. benefits, please.

About MetLife

Recognizedon Fortune magazine's list of the "World's Most Admired Companies",Fortune World’s 25 Best Workplaces™, as well as the Fortune 100 Best Companiesto Work For®, MetLife, through its subsidiaries and affiliates, is one of theworld’s leading financial services companies; providing insurance, annuities,employee benefits and asset management to individual and institutionalcustomers. With operations in more than 40 markets, we hold leading positionsin the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

As part of our New Frontier strategy, MetLife is building an AI-enabled, people-centered future. We’re looking for people who bring curiosity, adaptability, and a growth mindset as we use AI to enhance how we serve customers, support communities, and evolve the way work gets done. At MetLife, AI is a responsible partner that supports human judgment, creativity, and continuous improvement while helping us build trust, inclusion, and long-term value.

Our purposeis simple - to help our colleagues, customers, communities, and the world atlarge create a more confident future. United by purpose and guided by our corevalues - Win Together, Do the Right Thing, Deliver Impact Over Activity, andThink Ahead - we’re inspired to transform the next century in financialservices. At MetLife, it’s #AllTogetherPossible . Join us!

MetLife is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions are made without regards to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, genetic information, citizenship status (although applicants and employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States), uniformed service member or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law ("protected characteristics"). If you need an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [e-mail]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application process. MetLife maintains a drug-free workplace.

This posting is for a current vacancy and is anticipated to remain open for at least 90 days from the listed posting date.