Principal Application Engineer (SRE)

Discover. A brighter future.

With us, you’ll do meaningful work from Day 1. Our collaborative culture is built on three core behaviors: We Play to Win, We Get Better Every Day & We Succeed Together. And we mean it — we want you to grow and make a difference at one of the world's leading digital banking and payments companies. We value what makes you unique so that you have an opportunity to shine.

Come build your future, while being the reason millions of people find a brighter financial future with Discover.

Job Description:

What You’ll Do

Uses vast repertoire of delivering high impact software solutions to work intuitively. Speed comes from intuition. If something breaks you know where to look. Typically does the tough parts – e.g. (re)design and spends more time documenting than coding.

How You’ll Do It

• Creates technology solutions addressing high impact business priorities. Demonstrates the ability to analyze, design, code, test and deploy solutions and product features with high quality to production. Level of technical expertise enables solutions with high complexity and depth.
• Competent in multiple technical domains, including programming languages, security, automation, testing, and business domains. As a result, is the go-to person for many people outside of their team.
• Participates in strategic technology decisions and understands how these decisions impact Discover as a whole.
• Proactively identifies and mitigates issues based on intuition and experience in multiple domains. Is a thought leader amongst team members and drives problem solving to determine root cause.
• Coaches technology communities at Discover in areas of specific technology domain, design-thinking, agile software development way of working, security, architecture and/or data engineering.

Minimum Qualifications

At a minimum, here’s what we need from you:

• Bachelors – Computer Science, Engineering, Informatics, Information Security, Information Technology or related
• 6+ Years -- Information Technology, (Software) Engineering, or related
• Internal applicants only: technical proficiency rating of proficient on the Dreyfus engineering scale 

Physical and Cognitive Requirements
The physical requirements described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable a qualified individual with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the position as required by federal, state, and local laws:

• Primarily remain in a stationary position.
• No required movement about the work environment to complete the major responsibilities of the job.
• No
• Primarily performed indoors in an office setting.
• Ability to operate office equipment such as but not limited to computer, telephone, printer, and calculator.

Preferred Qualifications
Bonus Points If You Have:
 

Technical Skills:

• Programming & Automation – Strong coding in Python and Java with automation experience. 
• Strong Linux Expertise - Deep knowledge of RHEL Linux including performance optimization and troubleshooting in production environment 
• Experience with SAN, NAS, NFS and object-oriented solutions for low-latency applications 
• Distributed Data System like Hadoop, Apache Kafka/Nifi  for real time steaming, ingestion and processing 
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – Expertise in Terraform or Ansible to ensure compliance-driven deployments.
• Cloud & Hybrid Environments – Deep understanding of AWS and on-prem infrastructure, prefer AWS Solution architect Certification 
• Kubernetes & Containers – Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift for container orchestration in regulated environments.
• CI/CD with Compliance – Strong grasp of Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD with controls for change management.
• Observability & Monitoring – Expertise in Splunk, Datadog ensuring real-time fraud/anomaly detection.
• Incident Response & Resilience – Proven ability to lead incident resolution, post-mortems (PIR) and disaster recovery (BCP/DR).
• Performance Optimization – Experience with low-latency, high-throughput systems critical Debit/Credit Card payments.
• Database & Storage – Expertise in SQL (Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra) with strong consistency requirements.
• Security & Compliance – Strong grasp of encryption, Identity & Access Management IAM, firewalls and other tools.

Compliance Skills 

• Regulatory Compliance