Principal Software Engineer

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

***Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT.***

Empower’s Asset Movement & Scheduling team plays a foundational role in the company’s financial operations, ensuring that assets move securely and efficiently across our platforms. The team also powers the scheduling platform that welcomes new prospects, transitions them into valued clients, and sustains a close relationship between clients and their personal advisors through well‑timed calls and meetings. As a Principal Engineer, you will own the design, evolution, and quality of these mission‑critical micro-services while guiding a cross-functional squad toward cloud-native, test-driven excellence. This role blends deep hands-on coding with technical leadership, helping us modernize legacy code, harden our AWS infrastructure, and set gold-standard engineering practices across the company. 

What you will do:

• Design, build, and continuously refactor Java/Spring Boot services that move money and orchestrate scheduling workflows 

• Champion test-driven development, clean code, and “definition of done” standards 

• Architect cloud-native solutions on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS/FIFO, Kinesis, IAM) and define infrastructure as code in Terraform or CloudFormation 

• Mentor engineers by leading design reviews, pairing sessions, and documentation efforts—setting the tone as a self-starter, healthy disruptor, and model of accountability 

• Collaborate with Product, SRE, and InfoSec teams to translate ambiguous requirements into secure, performant APIs 

What you will bring: 

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience (including 2+ years in a principal or lead role) delivering complex distributed systems at scale 

• Proven accountability, follow-through, and habit of documenting and driving adoption of best practices; comfortable challenging the status quo and leading by example 

• Mastery of Java and Spring Boot—data structures, concurrency, profiling, and robust testing 

• Hands-on depth experience AWS including DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS/FIFO, Kinesis, and IAM roles/policies 

• Strong with Terraform or CloudFormation for repeatable, auditable environments 

• Advanced Dockerfile skills; working knowledge of Kubernetes tuning and operations 

• CI/CD & DevSecOps experience with Jenkins or GitLab CI pipeline design integrating functional tests, static analysis, vulnerability scanning, and performance testing 

• Proven experience building and maintaining backend APIs with TypeScript/JavaScript and Node.js (e.g., Express or Fastify)

• Deep understanding of unit, integration, UI, E2E, and BDD/Cucumber testing plus secure, PII-free logging and performance monitoring (Splunk familiarity is a plus) 

• Bachelor's degree in related field or an equivalent combination of professional experience and/or training required

​​What will set you apart:

• Experience modernizing monoliths to event-driven architectures, advanced Kubernetes (operators/service meshes), and a background in financial-services or