Overview Navy Federal Credit Union currently does not provide sponsorship for this role. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship. The Principal Engineer, Core Banking Modernization will provide enterprise-level technical leadership for the design, implementation, certification, and evolution of the capabilities required to operate NFCU's legacy and modern banking platforms as one logical banking ecosystem. The role will lead the engineering of the Core Banking Platform, with focus on dual-core coexistence. This role partners closely with business, product, architecture, engineering, and transformation teams to translate strategic objectives into scalable, secure, and resilient technology solutions.
The Principal Engineer provides deep technical expertise in core banking platforms, system integration, cloud-native architectures, DevSecOps, and modernization methodologies. This role will support the implementation and delivery of our Core Banking modernization program with a specific focus on co-existence of on premise and cloud banking platforms as an enabler for complete migration to a new core banking platform.
Responsibilities - Serve as the principal technical authority for dual-core coexistence across banking platforms
- Responsible for the solution/application design for implementing the Core Banking modernization program's coexistence (on premise and cloud) model and data migration/integration strategy
- Define the complete transaction lifecycle from originating channel through transport, ingestion, validation, decomposition, state resolution, routing, core processing, reconciliation, settlement, accounting, and General Ledger outcomes.
- Develops the integration design patterns for dual core routing (validate, enrich ,locate, route) inbound data to banking applications from internal and external platforms utilizing APIs, messaging services, event-driven architectures, and microservices
- Responsible for managing the mechanics of the cloud core platform with focus on data processing and reconciliation
- Develops the integration design patterns for data egress from core banking platform to other internal and external platforms utilizing APIs, messaging services, event-driven architectures, and microservices
- Define and govern ownership, account-location, servicing-authority, and routing models that determine which core processes each transaction, account, member relationship, and servicing action.
- Engineer routing patterns for single-core, cross-core, split-post, shadow, replay, migration, and fallback scenarios for banking transactions
- Define engineering controls that preserve transaction atomicity, ordering, idempotency, balance integrity, posting completeness, and financial finality across both cores
- Lead the adoption of AI-enabled software engineering capabilities, including intelligent code generation, test case creation, impact analysis, and documentation generation.
- Design AI-driven observability and operational intelligence capabilities to proactively detect anomalies, identify root causes, and improve platform resiliency.
- Design repeatable migration patterns covering data migration, synchronization, validation, cutover, rollback, stabilization, and legacy retirement
- Establish development standards, coding practices, security controls, and quality gates for modernization initiatives.
- Collaborate with infrastructure, security, and operations teams to implement end-to-end operational readiness and monitoring capabilities.
- Mentor senior engineers and development teams to strengthen organizational technical capabilities.
- Facilitate technical workshops, design sessions, architecture reviews, and modernization planning activities.
- Research and evaluate emerging technologies relevant to core banking and financial services modernization.
- Contribute to strategic technology planning and modernization roadmaps.
Qualifications - Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 15+ years of software engineering, solution architecture, and enterprise technology experience in Core Banking domain.
- Advanced knowledge of Core Banking platforms (e.g. Fiserv, FIS) .
- Significant experience in intersection of Core Banking with Retail Banking, Payments, Lending, or Products and Pricing (e.g.Zafin) environments
- Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale modernization, migration, or digital transformation initiatives migrating from mainframe systems to SaaS application.
- Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, API platforms (e.g. Mulesoft), event-driven solutions (e.g.Apache Kafka), and enterprise integrations patterns .
- Significant experience implementing DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and open source tools, automated testing frameworks, and modern software engineering practices.
- Experience working within highly regulated environments.
- Deep knowledge of security, compliance, resiliency, and operational excellence principles.
- Experience with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, observability, monitoring, and site reliability concepts.
- Strong understanding of application modernization and legacy migration strategies.
Desired Qualifications - Advanced knowledge of mainframe-based FIS banking core and modern core banking technology.
- Knowledge of Oracle cloud technologies, Azure and hybrid cloud architectures.
Additional InformationHours:- Monday - Friday, 8:00AM - 4:30PM
Location:- 820 Follin Lane, Vienna, VA 22180
- 5510 Heritage Oaks Drive, Pensacola, FL 32526
- 141 Security Drive, Winchester, VA 22602
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