Principal Engineer

Overview

Hybrid
Depends on Experience
Accepts corp to corp applications
Contract - W2
Contract - Independent
Contract - 12 Month(s)
Unable to Provide Sponsorship

Skills

principal technical leader
legacy system modernization
legacy-to-cloud transitions
enterprise environments
monolithic architectures
.NET and Azure-based architectures
CI/CD pipelines
DevOps practices
healthcare

Job Details

Position title: Principal Engineer

Location: Missoula, Montana

Contract or Full time.

Job Description:

- Serve as the principal technical leader for legacy modernization initiatives across the organization

- Drive the technical strategy and vision for transitioning monolithic applications to modern, cloud-native architectures

- Architect and design next-generation software systems that modernize legacy functionality while maintaining business continuity

- Lead cross-functional teams in solving the most complex technical challenges in legacy system transformation

- Provide technical governance and oversight for multiple modernization projects and teams

- Mentor and develop senior engineering talent, including Software Engineers III and IV, in modernization best practices

- Collaborate with executive leadership to align legacy modernization initiatives with long-term business strategy

- Represent the company's modernization expertise at conferences and industry events

- Drive innovation and research initiatives for legacy system transformation within the organization

- Analyze legacy functionality including U2 behaviors, stored procedures, and front-end workflows at an enterprise scale

- Document and explain complex system behaviors, edge cases, and data handling rules across multiple legacy systems

- Lead service decomposition efforts by mapping features and database dependencies to proposed cloud-native services - Establish interface contracts, data transformations, and integration patterns for large-scale modernizations

- Drive cutover planning, shadow traffic strategies, and validation workflows for phased migrations across the organization

- Create comprehensive diagrams, data flow maps, and logic breakdowns to support QA, Development, and Implementation teams

- Advocate for and establish NFRs such as logging, error handling, idempotency, and security during modernization efforts

- Define organizational standards for legacy modernization user story development and SDLC processes

- Mentor senior engineers in advanced modernization story shepherding techniques

- Drive adoption of best practices in legacy system analysis and cloud migration implementation

- Establish metrics and KPIs for measuring modernization story quality and delivery efficiency

- Lead initiatives to improve cross-team collaboration in legacy-to-cloud SDLC processes

- Guide organization-wide improvements in modernization user story management and delivery

- Provide final technical approval for major architectural decisions in legacy modernization projects

- Develop strategies for improving overall system reliability, performance, and scalability during transitions

Requirements:

- Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field

- 10+ years of experience in software engineering with significant focus on legacy system modernization

- Recognized expert in legacy-to-cloud transitions, preferably in enterprise environments

- Proven track record of architecting and delivering large-scale legacy modernization initiatives

- Deep understanding of monolithic architectures, common anti-patterns, and modernization strategies

- Expertise in microservices, REST APIs, domain-driven design, and message-based communication

- Advanced proficiency in SQL with ability to trace and interpret complex data logic across enterprise systems

- Experience leading implementation teams through business workflow to system behavior translations

- Outstanding leadership, communication, and influencing skills across technical and business stakeholders

- Ability to balance technical excellence with business pragmatism in modernization efforts

- History of contributions to the broader tech community in modernization practices

- Visionary mindset with ability to anticipate future technological needs in legacy transformation

- Experience in technical strategy development and execution for modernization at an organizational level - Deep expertise in .NET and Azure-based architectures

- Advanced knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices for modernization efforts

- Extensive experience with healthcare, payroll, or compliance-driven systems preferred

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