Principal Software Engineer

General Dynamics Information Technology; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

General Dynamics Information Technology is seeking a Principal Software Developer Senior to define and drive technical excellence across backend and full-stack engineering practices. This role requires experience in scalable distributed systems, strong leadership, and an emphasis on engineering best practices.

Candidates must have at least 5 years of related experience, US citizenship, and be able to maintain Public Trust 6C. The position emphasizes mentorship and collaboration, contributing to impactful technical initiatives.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record of leading production-ready, scalable distributed systems.
• Proven experience architecting and implementing microservices with reliability.
• Experience with automated testing strategies, performance optimization, and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive strategic direction for engineering practices and technical excellence.
• Lead the development of scalable systems for government customers.
• Mentor engineers and influence technical decisions across teams.

Skills

Java

Python

Microservice architectures

Distributed systems principles

Cloud engineering

API design

Observability and monitoring

DevOps practices

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Kafka

Job description

Principal Software Developer Senior

What You’ll Do

• Define and drive the strategic direction for backend and full‑stack engineering practices, architecture, and technical excellence across the organization
• Lead the development of scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems that serve government customers
• Serve as the technical authority and thought leader for system architecture, data design, and engineering excellence
• Design and implement modern service architectures, data pipelines, and infrastructure patterns that enable team velocity and system reliability
• Deliver new features and improvements to our core services including major read/write paths for customer intake, application screening, and information dissemination
• Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to balance technical feasibility with business requirements, making pragmatic trade‑offs that deliver measurable impact
• Build and maintain shared libraries, service frameworks, and infrastructure patterns that enable consistency and reduce cognitive load
• Identify opportunities to modernize our backend systems and take ownership of large‑scale technical initiatives that improve system quality, performance, and maintainability
• Establish and champion engineering best practices including API design, data modeling, testing strategies, observability patterns, security standards, and code quality
• Mentor and coach engineers at all levels on backend technologies, distributed systems, and establish career development pathways for backend specialization
• Influence technical decisions across teams and serve as a strategic advisor on architecture and infrastructure initiatives
• Work across the full stack when needed to solve problems end‑to‑end – frontend and infrastructure experience is valuable but backend systems are your primary focus

What We’re Looking For Evidence of Engineering Accomplishment

• Demonstrated track record of leading and delivering multiple production‑ready, scalable distributed systems with measurable business impact
• Proven experience architecting and implementing microservice architectures at scale with high throughput and reliability requirements
• Track record of establishing backend engineering standards, practices, and architectural patterns that improve team productivity and system quality
• Working experience with distributed system patterns including event‑driven architectures, asynchronous processing, caching strategies, and data consistency patterns
• Experience designing and implementing APIs (REST, GraphQL or similar) that serve as the foundation for customer‑facing applications
• Strong understanding of system transformation patterns with practical experience leading modernization efforts from monoliths to microservices or legacy to modern stacks
• Experience with observability, monitoring, and alerting strategies including structured logging, metrics, tracing, and incident response
• Familiarity with cloud‑native architectures, infrastructure as code, and deployment patterns (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Technical Excellence

• Strong proficiency in modern programming languages (Java, Python or similar) with deep understanding of language ecosystems and tooling
• Solid understanding of distributed systems principles including consistency models, consensus algorithms, failure modes, and reliability patterns
• Working knowledge of cloud engineering paradigms, asynchronous systems, service integration patterns, and event‑driven architectures
• Experience with automated testing strategies including unit testing, integration testing, contract testing, and end‑to‑end system testing
• Practical knowledge of performance optimization, capacity planning, and cost optimization
• Understanding of security principles including authentication, authorization, encryption, secrets management, and secure coding practices
• Experience establishing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, security scanning, and deployment strategies
• Familiarity with container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS), infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and DevOps practices

System Design & Architecture

• Demonstrated ability to design systems that balance consistency, availability, partition tolerance, performance, and cost
• Strong understanding of data architecture including database selection, schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimization
• Experience with message brokers, event streaming platforms (Kafka, SQS, EventBridge), and asynchronous processing patterns
• Ability to design for reliability including graceful degradation, circuit breakers, retry strategies, and disaster recovery
• Working knowledge of API design principles, versioning strategies, and backward compatibility patterns
• Understanding of system observability including structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics aggregation, and alerting strategies

Leadership, Ownership, & Communication

• Demonstrated ability to lead large‑scale technical initiatives from vision to production, influencing outcomes across multiple teams
• Quality driven, sets the standard for excellence in communication, code, and documentation
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and strategic vision clearly to engineers, product managers, executives, and external stakeholders
• Proven track record of mentoring and developing engineers at all levels, building organizational backend engineering capability
• Recognized advocate for sound engineering practices who establishes patterns and influences engineering culture
• Comfort leading cross‑functional initiatives, making architectural decisions with organizational impact, and navigating technical/business trade‑offs at the principal level

Required

• US citizenship – required
• Minimum 5+ years of related experience
• Must be a US Citizen and able to obtain and maintain Public Trust 6C

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans