Principal Software Engineer

Role: Principal Software Engineer
Location: Blue Bell, PA (Remote)

Let’s create our future together at The AES Group!

About The AES Group
The AES Group is a premier technology and engineering consulting company that has been bringing businesses and talent together for over 20 years to deliver innovative solutions that have the greatest positive impact on society. AES has helped over 40 business enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, engage their customers, empower their employees, and transform their business operations with the power of cloud, data, AI, engineering, and other emerging technologies.

Key Responsibilities:
Lead the design and delivery of scalable microservices using Java and Spring Boot, ensuring clean separation of concerns and resilience.
Design and optimize MS SQL schemas, stored procedures, and queries to support high-throughput transactional workloads.
Architect and maintain Kafka-based event-streaming pipelines for real-time data processing and decoupled service communication.
Collaborate with UX and product teams to build responsive, accessible front-end interfaces integrated with back-end APIs.
Conduct code reviews, define coding standards, and drive adoption of engineering best practices across the team.
Mentor and coach 4–8 engineers; run 1:1s, support career growth, and resolve technical blockers.
Partner with product managers and architects to translate business requirements into technical roadmaps. Champion observability, security, and CI/CD practices across the platform.
Actively contribute to hiring — screen candidates, run technical interviews, and help build the team. 

Qualifications & Experience
10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with a track record of delivering production systems at scale.
Deep expertise in Java (11+) and the Spring ecosystem — Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, Spring Data.
Strong MS SQL skills — indexing strategies, execution plans, normalization, and T-SQL development.
Proven experience building and operating Kafka pipelines in a distributed microservices environment.
Solid front-end proficiency in at least one modern framework (React, Angular, or Vue) with an eye for usability. Demonstrated leadership: led a team of engineers, owned delivery milestones, and influenced architectural decisions.
Comfortable in Agile/Scrum environments; experience facilitating sprint ceremonies.
Strong communication skills — able to explain complex decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform) is a strong plus.

Leadership & Soft Skills
Inspires a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement within the team.
Approaches conflict with empathy; builds consensus while being willing to make tough calls.
Proactively identifies risks and escalates with solutions, not just problems.
Acts as a bridge between engineering and the wider business — translating strategy into execution.