Principal Engineer - Digital Assets

Early Warning; Scottsdale (AZ); Hybrid; USD 202,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare Coverage

401(k) Plan with company match

Paid Time Off and holidays

Parental leave and family planning

Job summary

Early Warning is seeking a hands-on technical leader to set standards for excellence across multiple teams in cross-border money movement and digital asset settlement. You will mentor engineers, drive architecture, and partner with product to align on roadmaps.

The role requires deep FinTech experience, strong communication, and ability to influence across disciplines. Hybrid work from Scottsdale is available along with comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• Bachelor-level degree in computer science or related field.
• 15+ years in complex software design with 8+ years FinTech domain experience.
• Led design/evolution of large-scale payment platforms in regulated environments.
• Deep knowledge of digital asset or stablecoin systems, including security and scalability.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams to deliver technical solutions.
• Excellent communication and public speaking skills across org levels.
• Solid SDLC, Agile/LEAN, and DevOps practices experience.
• Proven full-stack development capability.

Responsibilities

• Own architectural design and patterns for cross-border money movement and digital asset settlement.
• Resolve complex scalability challenges across distributed payment platforms.
• Mentor engineers and guide teams to build secure, resilient, compliant solutions.
• Collaborate with product management to shape strategy and roadmaps.
• Be a senior technical leader and role model; coach team members.
• Own technical product design and architecture; drive stakeholder alignment.
• Prepare and present technical content to groups; engage customers to improve products.
• Collaborate across engineering, product, and architecture to shape approaches.

Skills

Public speaking

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentoring engineers

Communication

Strategic thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field

M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science

Tools

Java RESTful Web Services

Microservices Architecture

Spring (Boot/Core)

Kafka/Tibco JMS

Oracle PL/SQL

JavaScript (JQuery/AngularJS)

CI/CD: Git/Jenkins/Maven

Cloud: AWS/GCP/Azure

Git, Jira, Confluence

Terraform

Job description

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting‑edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

This position is a hands‑on, individual contributor technical leader involved in setting the standards for excellence in quality of outputs across multiple teams. Responsible for partnering with cross‑functional teams and providing input to a broad range of initiatives. A technical expert that is continuously learning, keeping abreast of new technologies and industry best practices, and finding ways to bring those practices into the engineering organization.

Essential Functions

• Own architectural design and technical patterns for cross‑border money movement and digital asset settlement systems.
• Resolve complex technical and scalability challenges across distributed, regulated payment platforms.
• Mentor engineers and guide teams in building secure, resilient, and compliant global payment solutions.
• Partners with product management to craft product strategy, create product descriptions and ensure alignment to technology roadmaps.
• Be a thought leader: a senior point of expertise on software engineering issues, industry trends and developing technologies. Be a role model to others on the team. Coach and mentor team members.
• Takes ownership for creating technical product design and architecture.
• Creates and conducts presentations for small‑to‑medium size groups.
• Works closely with customers to understand their needs and create a partnership for making Early Warning products better.
• Partners with software engineering, product, and architecture to shape engineering approaches, share knowledge and experience.
• Develop, scope and shape a departmental‑wide technical vision for the future.
• Collaborate and build relationships cross‑functionally to influence and motivate others; serve as an internal catalyst for progressive, strategic and successful change management.
• Support the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education and/or experience typically obtained through a Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field.
• Fifteen or more years of experience in designing and developing complex software projects with at least eight or more years in FinTech domain.
• Proven experience leading the design and evolution of complex, large‑scale payment or cross‑border transaction platforms in regulated environments.
• Deep technical understanding of digital asset or stablecoin‑based systems, including security, scalability, and operational reliability considerations.
• Experience in leading cross‑functional teams to create technical solutions.
• Effective communicator with exceptional public speaking skills. Comfortable presenting to all levels within the company.
• Knowledge of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, software development methodologies (Agile, Scrum, LEAN etc) and DevOps practices.
• Proven track record designing and building complex end‑to‑end systems (full stack developer).
• Hands‑on experience in designing and developing using the one or more of the following technologies
  • Java RESTful Web Services (Java, J2EE, JUnit, and Tomcat.)
  • Experience in Microservices Architecture.
  • Open Source Frameworks - Spring boot, Spring Core
  • Messaging frameworks such as Kafka, Tibco EMS or JMS
  • Oracle PL/SQL
  • JavaScript and scripting frameworks (JQuery, AngularJS)
• Hands‑on experience in test automation at various levels of testing (unit, component, integration and functional tests).
• Proven experience in OOA/OOD.
• Experience with CI/CD pipeline implementation including GIT, Chef, Maven, Jenkins etc.
• Solid understanding of modern Cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud or MS Azure.
• Experience of working with code repositories (e.g. Git, SVN), bug tracking tools (e.g. Jira, Bugzilla) and Wikis (e.g. Confluence).
• Background and drug screen.

Preferred Qualifications

• M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science or another technical field
• Knowledge of Splunk, Altiris & Zabbix
• Hands‑on Experience in working with AWS
• Experience with various database design and architectures
• Expertise in TerraForm and/or other cloud orchestration technologies
• Experience with Monitoring & Alerting systems like AppDynamics
• Experience with other computer languages like C#, Ruby, Python, and PHP
• Knowledge of ACH/EFT
• Knowledge of real time payment networks (RTP, FedNow)

Physical Requirements

Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

Base Pay Scale

San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $207,000 - $276,000.

Chicago, IL/Phoenix, AZ per year is: $202,000 - $230,000.

Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Benefits

• Healthcare Coverage –Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre‑tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
• 401(k) Retirement Plan –Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non‑Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.
• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And so much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.