Principal Software Engineer — Cloud-Native Architect

Fifth Third; Cincinnati (OH); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Fifth Third is seeking a Principal Software Engineer - Service Development to drive architectural direction, engineering excellence, and cross-squad coordination across domains. You will mentor teams, shape standards, and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture while guiding secure, scalable solutions.

Lead technical execution as a senior engineer, champion modern practices (microservices, CI/CD, observability), and partner with Product and Architecture to deliver high-quality software

Qualifications

• Expert-level proficiency in software architecture, system design, and integration patterns.
• Deep experience with cloud-native development using AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, VPC).
• Strong command of backend frameworks: Java / Spring Boot and JavaScript / NodeJS.
• Advanced knowledge of microservices, domain-driven design, and event-driven architecture.
• Skilled with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, and artifact management via JFrog Artifactory.
• Expertise with observability platforms such as Splunk and Dynatrace, including metric design, logging strategies, and cross-system dashboards.
• Strong understanding of security, compliance, and performance optimization practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of complex, scalable software solutions across multiple squads and domains.
• Influence and contribute to enterprise architecture to ensure secure, scalable systems.
• Create or extend architecture diagrams, sequence diagrams, and technical flows to support solution design across domains.
• Provide architectural guidance to squads, helping teams evaluate trade-offs and make sound technical decisions.
• Serve as the Tech Lead for a development squad when needed, guiding technical execution and ensuring alignment with architectural standards.
• Drive engineering standards across the development practice, ensuring code quality, observability maturity, and best practices adoption.
• Mentor engineers across squads and job levels, elevating overall technical capability.
• Rapidly assess unfamiliar codebases or systems to assist with troubleshooting, architecture evolution, or accelerated delivery.
• Cross-Squad Technical Leadership: guide cross-functional teams through complex, multi-squad problem solving and technical decision-making.
• Observability & Operational Excellence: promote reliability, logging, metrics, and dashboards; collaborate with SRE.

Skills

Software architecture

System design

Integration patterns

Java / Spring Boot

JavaScript / NodeJS

Cloud-native development

AWS

Tools

Terraform

CI/CD (Jenkins)

JFrog Artifactory

Splunk

Dynatrace

Job description

Fifth Third is seeking a Principal Software Engineer - Service Development to drive architectural direction, engineering excellence, and cross-squad coordination across domains. You will mentor teams, shape standards, and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture while guiding secure, scalable solutions.

Lead technical execution as a senior engineer, champion modern practices (microservices, CI/CD, observability), and partner with Product and Architecture to deliver high-quality software