Principal Engineer

About the role:

As a Principal Engineer, Financial Operations, you will provide technical leadership across the systems and teams that support our critical Financial Operations capabilities. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Architecture, Data, and business stakeholders to modernize complex business processes and create scalable, resilient solutions that support TQL’s continued growth.

You will help define and execute the technical strategy for our Financial Operations ecosystem, balancing modernization of existing applications with the adoption of new platforms, cloud capabilities, third-party products, APIs, and automation.

This is a highly influential, hands-on engineering role. You will work across multiple teams to establish architectural direction, solve our most complex technical challenges, reduce unnecessary complexity and manual processing, and ensure solutions align to a cohesive long-term technology strategy.

What’s in it for you:

- Position based in Cincinnati, OH; Charlotte, NC; or Tampa, FL (relocation assistance provided)
- Opportunity to design and build AI-powered and agentic solutions that reshape how critical Financial Operations processes are executed
- Opportunity to shape the future architecture of critical Financial Operations technology
- Influence technical strategy and modernization across multiple engineering teams and business capabilities
- Work with modern cloud, integration, automation, data, and application technologies
- Partner with senior technology and business leaders to solve complex, high-impact business problems
- A culture of continuous education and technical training, including reimbursement opportunities
- Hybrid work environment with the ability to work remotely 40 hours per month
- Join an organization recognized as a Computerworld Best Places to Work in IT

What you will do:

- Provide technical leadership across Financial Operations engineering teams, establishing architectural direction and helping teams translate business needs into scalable technical solutions
- Define and evolve the target architecture for Financial Operations capabilities, including applications, APIs, integrations, workflow/orchestration, data flows, and third-party platforms
- Lead modernization efforts that simplify legacy technology, clarify system responsibilities and boundaries, and reduce unnecessary technical complexity
- Identify opportunities to increase straight-through processing and automation, reducing manual work and improving operational efficiency
- Develop proofs of concept and production solutions that combine AI agents with APIs, enterprise data, workflow orchestration, and existing applications, helping move AI from experimentation into measurable operational value
- Design resilient integration patterns across internal applications, enterprise platforms, financial systems, and third-party solutions
- Establish patterns for APIs, services, event-driven integrations, workflow orchestration, and application architecture that can be reused across teams
- Partner with Product, Architecture, Data, Infrastructure, Security, and business stakeholders to ensure technology decisions support both immediate business needs and long-term strategy
- Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions and help determine when capabilities should be developed internally, delivered by enterprise platforms, or provided by third-party products
- Lead architectural design sessions and technical discovery for large, cross-functional initiatives
- Remain hands-on by developing proofs of concept, reviewing critical implementations, solving complex engineering problems, and contributing code where appropriate
- Identify systemic reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability risks and drive solutions that address root causes instead of symptoms
- Improve observability and traceability across distributed business processes so teams can more effectively understand the lifecycle of critical Financial Operations transactions
- Establish engineering standards and reusable patterns that improve consistency, maintainability, security, and delivery speed across teams
- Mentor engineers and technical leads, helping raise the engineering capability and technical depth of the broader organization
- Help develop pragmatic modernization roadmaps that allow teams to incrementally move from legacy architectures toward the desired future state without disrupting critical business operations

What you need:

- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience designing and delivering large-scale enterprise applications and distributed systems
- Proven experience providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams without relying on direct reporting authority
- Deep experience designing enterprise application architectures, including APIs, services, integrations, data flows, and distributed systems
- Strong hands-on development experience with technologies such as .NET/C#, REST APIs, SQL Server, TypeScript/React, or comparable enterprise technology stacks
- Experience modernizing legacy applications and incrementally migrating capabilities toward modern service-based and cloud architectures
- Strong understanding of API design, system integration patterns, service boundaries, asynchronous processing, and event-driven architectures
- Experience designing highly available, resilient, observable, and horizontally scalable systems
- Experience with Microsoft Azure or comparable cloud platforms
- Experience with containerization, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices using technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and automated deployment pipelines
- Experience integrating enterprise SaaS platforms and third-party products into complex application ecosystems
- Ability to evaluate build-versus-buy decisions based on business capability, architectural fit, cost, operational complexity, and long-term maintainability
- Ability to navigate complex existing systems, understand dependencies and business processes, and create pragmatic modernization paths rather than requiring large-scale rewrites
- Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical topics to engineers, business stakeholders, and senior leaders
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and drive alignment around architectural standards and engineering practices
- Experience in financial systems, billing, accounts receivable, accounting workflows, ERP platforms, or other Back Office domains is a plus

Where you'll be: 601 South Harbour Island Boulevard, Tampa, Florida 33602

Employment visa sponsorship is unavailable for this position. Applicants requiring employment visa sponsorship now or in the future (e.g., F-1 STEM OPT, H-1B, TN, J1 etc.) will not be considered.

About Us
Total Quality Logistics (TQL) is one of the largest freight brokerage firms in the nation. TQL connects customers with truckload freight that needs to be moved with quality carriers who have the capacity to move it.
As a company that operates 24/7/365, TQL manages work-life balance with sales support teams that assist with accounting, and after hours calls and specific needs. At TQL, the opportunities are endless which means that there is room for career advancement and the ability to write your own paycheck.
What’s your worth? Our open and transparent communication from management creates a successful work environment and custom career path for our employees. TQL is an industry-leader in the logistics industry with unlimited potential. Be a part of something big.
Total Quality Logistics is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status.
If you are unable to apply online due to a disability, contact recruiting at [email protected]