Principal Software Engineer

Job Title: Principal Software Engineer

Location: Bethesda,MD (Hybrid / Mostly On-Site)

Engagement Type: Full- Time

Clearance: Ableto obtain Public Trust clearance upon hire

Role Overview

Stackular is seeking a hands-on Principal Software Engineer to provide cross-stack technical leadership on a multi-year cloud-nativemodernization initiative supporting a federal research client within theNational Institutes of Health (NIH).

This role operates as the senior engineering voice on across-functional team that spans application development, cloud infrastructure,data integration, automation, and security. The portfolio under modernizationincludes roughly twenty legacy applications transitioning from .NET, Oracle,and SAP BusinessObjects on VM-based hosting to an AWS-managed,microservices-based platform delivered through a federated GraphQL API layerand a React/TypeScript frontend.

This position is ideal for engineers who can both writeproduction-grade code and exercise sound technical judgment when changes crossdomain boundaries — reviewing architecture, APIs, infrastructure, and data workside-by-side, and helping a newly integrated DevSecOps team deliver coherent,secure, operable systems.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership& Code Review

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across modernization engineering work, including application code, APIs, cloud infrastructure, automation pipelines, and database changes.
  
• Review pull requests that affect any layer of the stack; approve or recommend changes based on implementation risk, API design, data impact, security posture, deployment readiness, and architectural alignment.
  
• Enforce consistent engineering patterns for APIs, distributed services, cloud deployment, data integration, observability, and secure configuration.
  
• Uphold the program's modern engineering and cloud architecture standards, including microservice boundaries, schema governance, and infrastructure-as-code guardrails.
  

Architecture &Engineering Execution

• Help engineering teams translate target architecture decisions into working, maintainable code on the approved AWS technology stack.
  
• Guide design and implementation of containerized microservices using Python (FastAPI), GraphQL subgraphs (Apollo Federation), and React/TypeScript frontends.
  
• Advise on data architecture decisions involving Amazon RDS PostgreSQL, AWS Glue data pipelines, and legacy system integrations following the Strangler Fig migration pattern.
  
• Support secure-by-default cloud delivery on Amazon EKS using Terraform, GitHub Actions CI/CD, and AWS-native services (Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, X-Ray, WAF, ALB).
  
• Contribute to and review Architecture Decision Records when implementation choices deviate from approved patterns or introduce new technologies.
  

Cross-TeamCoordination & Mentorship

• Partner with the project stakeholders to identify technical dependencies, blockers, and sequencing issues during backlog refinement, sprint planning, and release coordination.
  
• Coordinate with the Enterprise Architect, application development leads, infrastructure and operations engineers, and security personnel when changes require specialized review or have architectural, operational, or compliance implications.
  
• Translate architecture and security guidance into practical, day-to-day implementation advice for engineers across the team.
  
• Mentor engineers on cloud-native delivery practices, distributed system patterns, secure development, observability, and operational ownership.
  

Required Skills &Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a technical lead, staff engineer, or principal engineer capacity on production cloud systems.
  
• Proven ability to reason across the full stack — frontend, backend, API, database, cloud infrastructure, automation, and security — and to evaluate the downstream impact of cross-boundary changes.
  
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, or reviewing distributed systems and microservice-style architectures, including API contracts, data ownership boundaries, and inter-service communication patterns.
  
• Strong, hands-on proficiency in Python (FastAPI or equivalent framework) and a modern frontend ecosystem (React with TypeScript preferred).
  
• Production experience with GraphQL APIs; familiarity with federated GraphQL (Apollo Federation, schema composition, schema governance, breaking-change detection in CI) is strongly preferred.
  
• Deep working knowledge of AWS cloud-native services, including EKS/Kubernetes, RDS PostgreSQL, S3, IAM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, and VPC networking.
  
• Practical experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), containerized delivery (Docker), and CI/CD automation (GitHub Actions or equivalent).
  
• Experience integrating modern services with legacy systems (.NET, Oracle, SAP BusinessObjects, or comparable) and executing incremental migrations using patterns such as Strangler Fig.
  
• Working knowledge of secure software delivery, including identity federation (OIDC, SAML 2.0, OAuth2), secrets management, RBAC, audit logging, and compliance evidence collection.
  
• Strong written and verbal communication; ability to explain technical tradeoffs clearly to engineers, program leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.
  
• Collaborative technical leadership style suited to a cross-functional team where influence comes from clarity, judgment, and trust rather than formal hierarchy.
  

Technical Skills

• Cloud Platform: AWS(EKS, RDS PostgreSQL, S3, Glue, IAM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, X-Ray, WAF,ALB, Route 53)
  
• Languages: Python(FastAPI), TypeScript/JavaScript; working familiarity with .NET / C# for legacyinterop
  
• APIs: GraphQL(Apollo Federation), REST, API gateway design, schema governance and versioning
  
• Frontend: Reactwith TypeScript, component-based design systems
  
• Data: PostgreSQL,AWS Glue ETL, SQL/NoSQL patterns, integration with legacy Oracle and reportingplatforms
  
• DevOps Tools: GitHubActions (preferred), GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent CI/CD platforms
  
• Containers &Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (Amazon EKS), Helm
  
• Infrastructure asCode: Terraform (modules, remote state, policy-as-code)
  
• Observability: AmazonCloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack
  
• Security: OAuth2,OIDC, SAML 2.0, AWS Secrets Manager, IAM, container/image scanning, dependencyscanning, SAST/DAST integration in CI
  

PreferredQualifications

• Experience supporting federal modernization or compliance-driven environments (FISMA, NIST 800-53, FedRAMP Moderate/High).
  
• Background producing or guiding cATO-related technical evidence (control narratives, scan results, IaC posture, observability artifacts).
  
• Hands-on experience with AWS Glue or comparable serverless ETL tooling for governed data integration.
  
• Exposure to event-driven architectures and change-data-capture (Kafka, Amazon MSK, Debezium, etc.)
  
• Familiarity with Apollo Federation tooling, schema registries, persisted queries, and breaking-change detection workflows.
  
• Prior experience working in or alongside cross-functional DevSecOps teams that integrate infrastructure, application development, and security personnel.
  

Nice to Have

• AWS certifications (Solutions Architect Professional, DevOps Engineer Professional, or Security Specialty).
  
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or comparable orchestration certification.
  
• Experience with zero-trust network architectures and federal identity integration (Entra ID, OIDC, SAML 2.0 federation).
  
• Exposure to AI/ML-assisted development practices and developer productivity tooling.
  
• Experience contributing to Architecture Decision Records and engineering guardrails in regulated environments.
  
• Familiarity with NIH or other federal research IT environments and their compliance, identity, and networking baselines.