Principal Engineer, Technology

Job Description Summary
Highly specialized expert developing software applications, in entirety or in part, that have a big impact on business for a large organization.

Job Description

This position will follow our hybrid work model, we expect the selected candidate to be in office 3 days a week at one of the following office locations: St. Petersburg, FL;

Summary:
As part of the Wealth Management technology team, the Principal Engineer will own and lead the technical architecture and development of our on-premises and cloud applications and data platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: the Principal Engineer sets technical direction, writes code alongside the team, leads proofs of concept (POCs) to validate new technologies and approaches, and mentors senior and junior engineers. As a Fortune 500 company, we offer the opportunity to shape enterprise-scale solutions in a collaborative and encouraging environment. The core team is based out of our headquarters in St. Petersburg, FL (Hybrid).
We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Engineer with strong technical leadership, analytical, and problem-solving skills. The candidate should be able to operate effectively in a fast-paced enterprise technology environment and support both strategic development initiatives and ongoing production stability. The ideal candidate is a passionate, hands-on technologist who leads by example and exhibits excellent English written and oral communication skills, allowing them to clearly convey complex technical concepts, architectural decisions, and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities:

- Own and lead the end-to-end technical architecture, design, and development of scalable, highly available, and secure solutions across on-premises and external cloud environments.
- Stay hands-on in coding and development: write high-quality, production-ready code alongside the team, conduct code and design reviews, and establish engineering standards and best practices.
- Lead POCs and prototypes with the team to validate new technologies and design approaches, and turn successful outcomes into reusable solution patterns and reference architectures.
- Develop a deep understanding of end-to-end data, application, and service requirements, and translate them into solution designs and technical roadmaps that support strategic development initiatives.
- Architect and build cloud-native microservices and REST APIs, Kafka-based event-driven systems, and scalable ETL/ELT data pipelines using Spark and AWS data services.
- Design, engineer, and build core platform capabilities, including networking, security, logging, monitoring, and persistent storage.
- Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements for scalability, resiliency, security, performance, high availability, and disaster recovery, and proactively plan capacity, monitoring, and scaling of platforms and applications.
- Support ongoing production stability by leading the resolution of complex production issues, performing root cause analysis, and driving long-term fixes and observability improvements.
- Research, evaluate, and recommend innovative technologies, tools, and frameworks for private and public cloud environments, weighing cost, performance, and security while adhering to technical and budgetary constraints.
- Drive CI/CD, DevOps, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) practices to improve delivery speed, quality, and consistency.
- Provide technical direction and mentorship to senior and junior engineers, fostering a culture of engineering excellence, collaboration, and continuous learning.
- Lead technical planning and execution within the Agile or Waterfall development lifecycle, including daily stand-ups, biweekly sprint planning, estimation, and design reviews.
- Collaborate with business partners, product owners, technology teams, vendors, and support teams to align on requirements, priorities, and solutions, and communicate across departments to solve problems.
- Occasionally work a non-standard shift including nights and/or weekends and/or have on-call responsibilities.
- Performs other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Required Skills:

- Proven track record of owning and leading technical architecture and hands-on development for enterprise-scale systems, including leading POCs and guiding solutions from concept to production.
- Strong experience with Java, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices, ORM/Hibernate, and distributed systems.
- Experience with Python programming.
- Strong experience with AWS services such as EKS, MSK, S3, EMR, Redshift, Glue, MWAA/Airflow, IAM, and CloudWatch.
- Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, cloud-native architecture, and Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
- Experience with Apache Kafka/Confluent Kafka and event-driven architectures.
- Experience building scalable data pipelines, ETL/ELT solutions, Spark-based processing, and distributed data platforms.
- Experience with Oracle, Redshift, SQL, or similar database platforms.
- Strong understanding of application scalability, resiliency, security, performance, high availability, and disaster recovery.
- Experience with CI/CD and DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Git, Azure DevOps/TFS, and SonarQube.
- Experience with Monitoring and APM tools such as Datadog, Dynatrace, CloudWatch, and Splunk.
- Ability to provide technical direction and mentor senior and junior engineers.
- Experience in financial services or large-scale enterprise technology environments is preferred.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to work effectively with business partners, product owners, technology teams, vendors, and support teams.
- Experience using AI-assisted productivity tools such as GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or similar tools for documentation, analysis, and development.

Ability to:

- Identify and understand complex technical issues, problems, and opportunities; compare data from different sources to draw conclusions.
- Clearly convey complex technical information and ideas through a variety of media to individuals or groups, from engineering teams to senior leadership, in a manner that engages the audience and helps them understand and retain the message.
- Use effective approaches for choosing a course of action or developing appropriate solutions; recommend or take action that is consistent with available facts, constraints, and probable consequences.
- Balance long-term architectural goals with near-term delivery commitments and production support needs.
- Influence technical direction and build consensus across teams, often without direct authority.
- Demonstrate an expert level of technical and professional skill or knowledge in position-related areas; remain current with developments and trends in areas of expertise.
- Develop and use collaborative relationships to facilitate the accomplishment of work goals.
- Make internal and external clients and their needs a primary focus of actions; develop and sustain productive client relationships.
- Occasionally work a non-standard shift including nights and/or weekends and/or have on-call responsibilities.

Education
Bachelor’s: Computer and Information Science, Bachelor’s (Required)

Work Experience
General Experience – 10 to 15 years

Certifications

Travel

Workstyle
Hybrid

The total compensation for this position includes base salary or wages, and may include components such as additional compensation (cash or equity), discretionary bonuses, or commissions. This position is eligible for a benefits package that may include medical, dental, and vision; life insurance; critical illness insurance and accident insurance; disability benefits; retirement savings; paid time off (including vacation, holidays, and sick leave); and parental leave.  Eligibility for benefits and specific offerings may vary based on position and employment status. To view more details of the benefits offered, visit Myrjbenefits.com.

At Raymond James our associates use five guiding behaviors (Develop, Collaborate, Decide, Deliver, Improve) to deliver on the firm's core values of client-first, integrity, independence and a conservative, long-term view.

We expect our associates at all levels to:
•  Grow professionally and inspire others to do the same
•  Work with and through others to achieve desired outcomes
•  Make prompt, pragmatic choices and act with the client in mind
•  Take ownership and hold themselves and others accountable for delivering results that matter
•  Contribute to the continuous evolution of the firm

At Raymond James – as part of our people-first culture, we honor, value, and respect the uniqueness, experiences, and backgrounds of all of our Associates.  When associates bring their best authentic selves, our organization, clients, and communities thrive. The Company is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions on the basis of merit and business needs.