Principal Software Engineer

The Principal Software Engineer is responsible for leading and guiding the technical direction of product features, providing mentorship to junior engineers, and driving the overall success of features to meet user and business needs. This position involves a combination of technical expertise, leadership skills with excellent interpersonal communication skills, customer focus, and exceptional follow-up skills.

The Principal Software Engineer reports directly to the Development Manager on an agile software development team.

This is what you’ll do:

• Lead the design, development, and implementation of complex software systems and solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to a team of software engineers, including mentoring and coaching junior team members.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to understand project requirements and define technical solutions.
• Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, providing updates, presenting technical concepts, and addressing questions or concerns.
• Develop and maintain Python-based software applications and systems.
• Write clean, efficient, and reusable code following best practices and coding standards.
• Conduct code reviews, provide constructive feedback, and ensure adherence to quality guidelines.
• Identify and troubleshoot software defects, performance bottlenecks, and other issues, and propose solutions.
• Optimize and improve existing software applications for better performance and scalability.
• Integrate data storage solutions, databases, and APIs into applications.
• Implement security measures to protect software systems and user data.
• Stay up to date with the latest industry trends, technologies, and best practices in Python development.
• Collaborate with the testing team to develop and execute unit tests and integration tests to ensure software quality and reliability.
• Document software designs, technical specifications, and development processes.
• Participate in agile development methodologies, such as Scrum, and contribute to sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.

This is what you’ll need:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 7 years of proven experience as a Python developer or in a similar role.
• Strong proficiency in Python and its frameworks (such as Django, Flask, or Pyramid).
• Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and experience in integrating front-end components with Python-based back-end systems.
• Experience in developing RESTful APIs and working with third-party APIs.
• Solid understanding of database systems (Postgres) and experience in data modeling and query optimization.
• Minimum of 1 year of experience with AWS cloud services
• Experience with New Relic monitoring and performance optimization is ideal
• Experience with Celery task queue implementation and management
• Knowledge of software development best practices, including version control (Git), code reviews, testing methodologies, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent teamwork and communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and handle multiple tasks and projects simultaneously.