Principal IT Software Developer

Sas; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Plans

401k plan

Tuition assistance

Vacation & holidays

Winter Wellness Break

Parental leave

Unlimited sick days

Onsite Health Center

Job summary

SAS is seeking a Principal IT Software Developer to lead the architecture and hands‑on development of AI‑first cloud lifecycle automation. You will drive secure automation across enterprise systems and complex workflows while guiding distributed teams and ensuring production readiness.

You will apply AI‑first engineering, improve reliability, and translate regulatory needs into reusable automation with strong focus on security, observability, and governance.

Qualifications

• US citizenship is required.
• 12+ years delivering production software and cloud workflows.
• Ability to set technical strategy while remaining hands‑on in development, integration, troubleshooting, and delivery.
• Strong experience with software architecture, APIs, workflow orchestration, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, cloud automation, and reusable service design.
• Experience designing and supporting cloud provisioning, deployment, lifecycle management, recovery, and decommissioning workflows.
• Hands‑on experience integrating AI development tools, intelligent agents, or automated decision support into software delivery and operations.
• Understanding of security, governance, validation, observability, auditability, cost, and human‑oversight requirements for production AI automation.
• Ability to diagnose distributed‑system and workflow failures and design safe, observable, automated recovery processes.
• Ability to lead technical decisions and coordinate delivery across distributed teams and stakeholder groups, including regulated or access‑restricted environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy, architecture, and hands‑on development of secure cloud automation across services, environments, and enterprise systems.
• Lead build, deployment, provisioning, configuration, user lifecycle, fleet‑management, recovery, and decommissioning workflows.
• Apply AI‑first engineering and intelligent agents to automate repeatable decisions, development activities, validation, troubleshooting, and operational tasks with appropriate human oversight.
• Improve reliability through automated testing, observability, failure detection, diagnosis, remediation, retry, cleanup, recovery, and fallback paths.
• Lead complex integrations across cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, APIs, workflow orchestration, internal services, and enterprise systems.
• Translate business, customer, operational, security, and regulatory requirements into reusable, maintainable, governed, and well‑documented automation.
• Coordinate delivery across distributed teams, mentor engineers and technical leads, and resolve architectural risks, dependencies, ownership gaps, and operational weaknesses.
• Equivalent combination of related education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

Skills

US Citizenship

12+ yrs exp

Cloud/workflows

AI/ML tooling

Leadership

Security/compliance

Communication

Hands-on development

Tools

APIs

IaC

CI/CD

Job description

Principal IT Software Developer

We’re a leader in data and AI. Through our software and services, we inspire customers around the world to transform data into intelligence – and questions into answers.

If you’re looking for a dynamic, fulfilling career with flexibility and a world-class employee experience, you’ll find it here. We’re recognized around the world for our inclusive, meaningful culture and innovative technologies by organizations like Fast Company, Forbes,Newsweek and more.

About the job

CloudOps Platform Engineering is looking for a Principal IT Software Developer to lead the architecture, technical direction, and hands‑on development of AI‑first cloud lifecycle automation. Our team builds and operates enterprise cloud services that improve the delivery, reliability, scalability, and supportability of complex build and deployment workflows across globally distributed teams, including regulated or access‑restricted environments.

In this role, you will apply AI to software architecture, engineering, validation, troubleshooting, recovery, and operations. You will use intelligent agents and automated workflows to reduce manual effort, detect failures earlier, accelerate remediation, and improve delivery outcomes while ensuring solutions remain secure, maintainable, observable, governed, and production-ready.

As a Principal IT Software Developer, you will:

• Own the technical strategy, architecture, and hands‑on development of secure cloud automation across services, environments, and enterprise systems.


• Lead build, deployment, provisioning, configuration, user lifecycle, fleet‑management, recovery, and decommissioning workflows.


• Apply AI‑first engineering and intelligent agents to automate repeatable decisions, development activities, validation, troubleshooting, and operational tasks with appropriate human oversight.


• Improve reliability through automated testing, observability, failure detection, diagnosis, remediation, retry, cleanup, recovery, and fallback paths.


• Lead complex integrations across cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, APIs, workflow orchestration, internal services, and enterprise systems.


• Translate business, customer, operational, security, and regulatory requirements into reusable, maintainable, governed, and well‑documented automation.


• Coordinate delivery across distributed teams, mentor engineers and technical leads, and resolve architectural risks, dependencies, ownership gaps, and operational weaknesses.


• Equivalent combination of related education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

Required qualifications

• US Citizen required.


• 12+ years of experience delivering production software, automation services, and cloud workflows across multiple systems, environments, service portfolios, and engineering teams.


• Demonstrated ability to set technical strategy and architecture while remaining hands‑on in development, integration, troubleshooting, and delivery.


• Strong experience with software architecture, APIs, workflow orchestration, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, cloud automation, and reusable service design.


• Experience designing and supporting cloud provisioning, deployment, lifecycle management, recovery, and decommissioning workflows.


• Hands‑on experience integrating AI development tools, intelligent agents, or automated decision support into software delivery and operations.


• Understanding of security, governance, validation, observability, auditability, cost, and human‑oversight requirements for production AI automation.


• Ability to diagnose distributed‑system and workflow failures and design safe, observable, automated recovery processes.


• Ability to lead technical decisions and coordinate delivery across distributed teams and stakeholder groups, including regulated or access‑restricted environments.


• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including documentation of architecture, decisions, ownership, procedures, risks, and support expectations.


• Equivalent combination of related education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with infrastructure automation across public cloud, hybrid, or multi‑cloud environments.


• Experience with AI agents, multi‑agent orchestration, tool integrations, technical‑document retrieval, and AI‑assisted development or operations.


• Experience evaluating and governing AI automation, including model selection, validation, observability, auditability, security, cost controls, and human oversight.


• Experience developing self‑service automation, service catalogs, environment provisioning, fleet management, or enterprise service‑management integrations.


• Experience modernizing legacy workflows into reusable automation shared across services or product portfolios.


• Experience supporting production cloud services across globally distributed engineering and operations teams.


• Experience designing reusable automation frameworks that accommodate differing service, customer, security, and regulatory requirements.

World‑class benefits

Highlights include...

• Comprehensive medical, prescription, dental and vision plans.


• Medical plan options include:
  
  
  
  • PPO with low annual deductible and copays.
  
  
  • HDHP combined with a health savings account with a contribution from SAS (no access to on‑site health care center).
  
  
  
  


• Onsite Health Care Center (HQ) that’s free to employees and family members enrolled in the PPO plan. There’s a pharmacy too! Not local to HQ? The pharmacy will ship prescriptions for no additional charge!


• An industry‑leading 401k plan.


• Tuition Assistance Program and programs and resources to support your development


• Generous time away including vacation time, a variety of paid holidays, and our much‑loved U.S. Winter Wellness Break between December 25 and January 1.


• Volunteer Time Off, parental leave and unlimited paid sick days.


• Generous childcare benefits for all full‑time employees.

#LI‑CC

Additional Information

To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status. SAS is an equal opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. Read more: Know Your Rights. Also view the Pay Transparency notice.

Job level will be determined based on the applicant's education, skills and experience. Resumes may be considered in the order they are received. SAS employees performing certain job functions may require access to technology or software subject to export or import regulations. To comply with these regulations, SAS may obtain nationality or citizenship information from applicants for employment. SAS collects this information solely for trade law compliance purposes and does not use it to discriminate unfairly in the hiring process.