Senior Principal Engineer: Systems & AI Platforms

MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC.; Westminster (CO); On-site; USD 135,000 - 198,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with company match

Mental health resources

Student loan repayment assistance

Adoption reimbursement

Pet insurance

Job summary

Vantor is seeking a Principal Engineer – Software Systems in Colorado to provide senior technical leadership for complex software systems spanning cloud platforms, distributed systems, AI-enabled products, and mission software. You will partner with engineering, product, and architecture leaders to define system behavior and ensure scalable, resilient outcomes.

You will drive architecture trade studies, guide cross-team delivery, and mentor senior engineers while balancing rigor with product

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent experience solving complex software systems problems.
• Significant experience architecting and delivering large-scale, software-intensive systems.
• Demonstrated success leading major cross-functional or cross-domain technical initiatives.
• Deep understanding of modern software architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience leading architecture reviews, technical trade studies, and consequential design decisions.
• Experience defining system boundaries, interfaces, integration strategies, and validation approaches.
• Strong understanding of software development, integration, deployment, and operational readiness.
• Ability to communicate effectively with software engineers, architects, product leaders, customers, senior leaders, and executives.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and create alignment across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design and delivery of complex, cross-domain software systems.
• Define system architecture, integration strategy, and technical direction across multiple engineering teams.
• Translate ambiguous customer, mission, and business problems into scalable technical solutions.
• Lead architecture trade studies and make consequential design decisions across competing priorities.
• Drive system decomposition, interface definition, dependency management, and integration planning for large distributed systems.
• Partner with Product to validate customer needs and ensure delivered capabilities solve the right problems.
• Identify architectural, integration, operational, and delivery risks early and drive mitigation before they become execution problems.
• Shape technical direction across a product portfolio or strategic technical domain.
• Influence engineering organizations through technical credibility rather than reporting authority.
• Raise engineering quality through better architecture, engineering practices, technical standards, and mentoring of senior technical leaders.
• Drive capabilities from concept through integration, validation, operational readiness, and customer adoption.

Skills

Systems Thinking

Software Architecture

Technical Leadership

Learning Agility

Product & Mission Orientation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud-native platforms

Job description

Vantor is seeking a Principal Engineer – Software Systems in Colorado to provide senior technical leadership for complex software systems spanning cloud platforms, distributed systems, AI-enabled products, and mission software. You will partner with engineering, product, and architecture leaders to define system behavior and ensure scalable, resilient outcomes.

You will drive architecture trade studies, guide cross-team delivery, and mentor senior engineers while balancing rigor with product