Principal Software Engineer
Elios AIAbout the role
Principal Software Engineer
Location: Remote (US) | Type: Contract | Experience: 10+ years | Pay: Up to $90/hr
About the Role
We're hiring a Principal Software Engineer to be the senior technical leader on enterprise engagements at a cloud services and application modernization consultancy. You'll own architectural direction and delivery for cloud-native systems at large, complex organizations, lead the engineering team on the account, and work directly with client leadership.
Much of this job is reading a complicated environment quickly and being credible in the room while you do it. You'll frequently sit in blended teams alongside client engineers, working inside their codebase and their process, and improving both without making it a fight.
If you like walking into a half-built system and figuring out what should actually change, that's most of the work.
What You'll Do
Set architectural direction on enterprise engagements and make the key design calls, keeping delivery tied to what the business is trying to accomplish
Assess in-flight projects, evaluating architecture, codebase, team dynamics, and backlog, then say plainly what's working and what isn't
Define the strategy for replacing legacy and monolithic systems with cloud-native microservice architectures
Architect and maintain microservice systems with real attention to scalability, resilience, and maintainability across distributed environments
Design service integration patterns: inter-service communication, API gateway configuration, external platform integration, distributed data flows
Lead large feature releases that cross team boundaries or need coordination with client teams
Use AI development tools to move faster while applying the rigor to validate, test, and refactor the output, and coach the team to do the same
Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and technical coaching, and enforce standards for quality, testing, and deployment
Support scoping and estimation, provide technical input into statements of work, and join pre-sales conversations when needed
Contribute reference architectures and accelerators back to the wider practice
Qualifications
Experience
10+ years building and delivering production applications from design through release and iteration
Architected and led microservice-based systems in production, not just worked on them
Integrated with complex third-party enterprise platforms via APIs
Java, Kotlin, and/or Go at a level sufficient to assess and modernize existing backend services during legacy migrations
Client-facing consulting or professional services delivery experience preferred
Stakeholder range: equally comfortable presenting to a CTO and whiteboarding with a junior developer
Advanced Skills
Multiple architecture patterns in depth, including microservices and event-driven
Expert microservices work: service discovery, API gateways, REST, gRPC, messaging, distributed tracing
React 18+ with TypeScript, including component architecture, state management, and performance optimization
HTML5 and CSS, TailwindCSS v4 preferred
Data and retrieval pattern design across PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, and data pipeline architectures
Intermediate Skills
Kubernetes and container orchestration, EKS preferred
Docker image building and optimization for local and production use
Terraform with state management, or CloudFormation / CDK
AWS across Lambda, EC2/EKS, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, API Gateway, S3, RDS, DynamoDB
Jest and/or PyTest, plus REST and WebSocket architectures
Legacy system assessment and modernization strategy
Nice to Have
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
Expert Python including async and concurrency, packaging, testing, and FastAPI
AI agent frameworks, agentic workflow patterns, or hands-on LLM integration
Financial services, capital markets, or asset management domain experience
Regulated or compliance-heavy delivery environments
Why Join Us
This is a practice where the principal engineer is expected to have opinions and defend them, with clients and internally. You'll shape how modernization work gets done across engagements, not just on your own account.
Responsibilities
- Set architectural direction on enterprise engagements and make key design calls
- Assess in-flight projects, evaluating architecture, codebase, team dynamics, and backlog
- Define strategy for replacing legacy systems with cloud-native microservice architectures
- Architect and maintain microservice systems with attention to scalability and resilience
- Design service integration patterns and lead large feature releases
- Mentor engineers through code review and technical coaching
- Support scoping and estimation, provide technical input into statements of work
Qualifications
- 10+ years building and delivering production applications
- Experience architecting and leading microservice-based systems
- Integrated with complex third-party enterprise platforms via APIs
- Proficient in Java, Kotlin, and/or Go
- Client-facing consulting or professional services delivery experience preferred
Skills mentioned
About Elios AI
Elios AI is a Workforce-as-a-Service platform, powered by Elios Insights. We identify, train, and deploy the people who make companies AI-native: Forward Deployed Engineers, AI Solutions Architects, and the specialists who ship AI into production. We partner with the leading AI labs. Elios AI is part of the OpenAI Partner Network and Anthropic's Claude Partner Network. Most companies have already found their AI use cases. Shipping them is the hard part. More than 80% of AI projects fail, not because the technology doesn't work, but because going AI-native means changing processes, teams, and how decisions get made. That takes people. So we built the platform to find them, train them, and deploy them. Three ways to engage: --> Specialists on Demand. Vetted Forward Deployed Engineers and AI specialists, deployed into your environment in 48 hours. --> Pods. Senior-led AI teams that solve alongside you and leave the capability behind. --> Accelerated Solutions. Scoped, outcome-owned builds for when you need the result, not just the people. Technologists evaluating technologists. Elios Insights matches across a 1.1M+ profile talent graph, then operators who know what good looks like screen every specialist. The platform automates the administrative work of sourcing and deploying specialists, so our people focus on fit and our clients move faster. Fewer candidates. Faster decisions. We built Elios AI because we lived the problem. Our leadership has run P&Ls, shipped production AI, and led digital delivery across the enterprise. That operator experience shapes how we screen, how we price, and how we deliver. Consulting-grade quality. On-demand economics. 1 in 3 presented, hired. 95% retention. 100-day guarantee. We make your team AI-native, and we leave the capability with you.