Principal Engineer

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

How will you make an impact in this role?

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as the senior-most engineering leader across Financial and Risk & Compliance technology teams, providing strategic direction on systems design, cloud architecture, and engineering execution.
• Architect and implement robust, scalable, secure, and high-performance platforms and services in alignment with compliance and regulatory frameworks.
• Drive end-to-end technical leadership across complex domains such as financial ledgers, AML/KYC systems, risk scoring engines, and data platforms.
• Lead solutioning efforts on high-impact cross-cutting initiatives with significant business visibility and impact.
• Collaborate with senior product, risk, compliance, and enterprise architecture partners to align technology roadmaps and long-term vision.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects across teams, encouraging a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends to influence platform strategies and technology investments.
• Translate complex technical issues and system interdependencies into clear narratives for executive collaborators.

Core Technical Skills:

• Deep expertise in system design, cloud-native architecture, and enterprise-level engineering standard methodologies.
• Advanced knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), microservices, event-driven architecture, and containerization.
• Strong hands-on development experience in technologies such as Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Kafka, Vert.x, RESTful APIs, ElasticSearch, Couchbase, Postgres, and distributed databases.
• Proficiency in CI/CD, DevOps, observability, performance tuning, and scalable systems design.
• Familiarity working within regulatory compliance frameworks such as SOX, PCI, and FFIEC, and their downstream implications.
• Experience navigating financial systems (e.g., accounting, reconciliation, ledger services) and risk & compliance platforms (e.g., AML, KYC, fraud detection).

Leadership & Strategic Skills:

• Executive-level communication with a strong ability to influence at all organizational levels
• Critical thinking with the ability to connect long-term vision to pragmatic execution.
• Collaborative leadership style that thrives in multi-functional, matrixed environments.
• Outstanding problem-solving and decision-making capabilities, balancing technical trade-offs with business impact.
• Proven experience in mentoring and growing senior engineering talent and building strong engineering culture.
• Ability to manage through ambiguity and drive clarity on complex initiatives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and judgement.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience with a focus on architecture, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise-scale platforms.
• Demonstrated success in leading architecture and engineering for complex, regulated environments—ideally within financial services, risk, or compliance domains.
• High level of hands