Principal Software Engineer

Priority Dispatch Corp.; O’Fallon (MO); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

True Manufacturing is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own the connected-equipment software platform end-to-end. You will lead architecture, data, security, and release, while shipping production-grade code and owning the deployment pipeline.

This hands-on leadership role requires 10+ years of shipping production software, expert Java and Node.js/Python skills, and deep AWS/Kubernetes experience to ensure 24/7 platform reliability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 10+ years delivering production software.
• Expert in Java and either Node.js/TypeScript or Python.
• Hands-on Kubernetes in production on AWS.
• Experience with event streaming and data-intensive systems.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture: services, data models, APIs, security.
• Ship production code across polyglot stack; lead deployment pipelines.
• Manage multi-environment release and incident resolution; escalation authority.
• Provide blameless post-incident analysis and runbook updates.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to maintain uptime and reliability.

Skills

Java

Node.js/TypeScript

Python

Kubernetes

AWS

React

Distributed systems

Incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Kafka

PostgreSQL

Terraform

Docker

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

The Principal Software Engineer is the senior-most technical authority for True Manufacturing's connected-equipment software platform, owning it end to end: architecture, infrastructure, data, security, and release. This is a deeply hands-on role — shipping production code, owning the deployment pipeline, and serving as the escalation point of last resort when the platform is down.Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned.Architecture & EngineeringEnd-to-end architecture: services, APIs, data model, event streams, infrastructure, security.Production code across a polyglot stack: Java/Spring Boot microservices, Node.js/React applications, serverless designs, and Python tooling.Build-vs-buy decisions, coding standards, and pragmatic technical-debt reduction.Production & ReliabilityAvailability, observability, alerting, and incident resolution.Escalation point of last resort. You take ultimate responsibility for uptime and resolution.CI/CD, multi-environment release management, and production deploy authority.Blameless post-incident analysis; every incident becomes a runbook, a test, or a design change.Infrastructure & DataThe AWS footprint: Kubernetes workloads, infrastructure-as-code, IAM, secrets, and cost.The data layer: PostgreSQL at telemetry scale, supporting stores, and the event-streaming topology.The analytics pipeline and data lake.The edge-to-cloud pipeline: device connectivity, ingestion, the device–cloud message contract, and firmware coordination with embedded engineering.SecurityIdentity and access, enterprise SSO, multi-tenant isolation, secrets, least-privilege, dependency hygiene.Represent the platform in customer security evaluations.LeadershipArchitectural direction, design review, and code-review quality gates.Independent command of every service and deployment path.AI-First EngineeringOwn how the platform is built with AI: agent conventions, knowledge base, agent-generated tests, tooling, and guardrails.Drive greater agentic capability across engineering and measure it.Ship AI capabilities in the product where they create measurable value.On-Site ExpectationsThe Principal Software Engineer is an office-based role. Regular, predictable on-site attendance is required. Eligibility for up to one (1) remote workday per week may be permitted, subject to business needs and departmental guidelines.Perform core job responsibilities through regular in-person collaboration, including participation in meetings, team discussions, and cross-functional coordination.Collaborate with fellow team members and leadership in a shared work environment to support innovation and timely decision-making, problem-solving, and operational effectiveness.Maintain a consistent on-site presence to support and respond to day-to-day business needs, including attendance of scheduled meetings and real-time collaboration as needed to ensure alignment of department and company priorities.Meet regularly with manager in-person to align on workload, priorities, performance, and ongoing professional development.Bachelor's degree required.Ten or more years related experience required.Production accountability. 10+ years shipping and operating production software at principal/staff scope; has personally led resolution of high-severity incidents on systems they built.Polyglot backend depth. Expert in Java, and either Node.js/TypeScript or Python, and able to debug the other.Kubernetes in production. Hands-on operation of production workloads on AWS; deep AWS fundamentals.AI-native. Coding agents are your default. You can show how you make a repository produce shippable agent output, and where you draw the line.Distributed-team leadership. Has led a distributed engineering team and owned the quality gate for code they did not write.Event streaming at depth. Production experience with Kafka or equivalent, including ordering and back-pressure failure modes.PostgreSQL at scale. Schema design, migrations, query performance, high-volume telemetry.Writes clearly. Runbooks, ADRs, and design docs are part of the job.AWS serverless design (Lambda, event-driven pipelines, Aurora); strong React; infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD ownership at depth; security architecture (tenant isolation, IAM, secrets); has led a live migration from containers to serverless strongly preferred.IoT / connected-device experience (fleet management, telemetry, cellular edge hardware); industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus) and the ability to read embedded C; data-lake experience (Spark, Athena, Parquet); enterprise multi-tenant B2B SaaS; building LLM-powered features or agent tooling preferred.This role carries after-hours availability expectations for production-critical incidents, consistent with the escalation-of-last-resort duty above.The hours for this position are 8:00am - 4:30pm, Monday through Friday.We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.Company-paid background check required upon hire.