Principal Programmer/Technical Lead, IT Applications

Intro

Are you ready to explore a world of possibilities, both at work and during your time off? Join our American Airlines family, and you’ll travel the world, grow your expertise and become the best version of you. As you embark on a new journey, you’ll tackle challenges with flexibility and grace, learning new skills and advancing your career while having the time of your life. Feel free to enrich both your personal and work life and hop on board!

Why you'll love this job

• ​This job is a member of the Information Technology Team within the Information Technology Division.
• Responsible for providing technical leadership for assigned IT development personnel and be responsible for the technical design and implementation of mid-range software development of the assigned web services and/or applications.
• Key aspects which will differentiate this role are: possessing working knowledge of latest industry best practices and trends within data frameworks and management (e.g. SQL/non-SQL, In-memory Cache, SSD); cloud frameworks, content delivery network design, web services design, rules engine design, and software optimization techniques.

What you'll do

  

• Works with product management,  business analysts, developers, testers and architectural teams to define strategy and requirements
• Develops and drives high-level strategic initiatives and secures commitment from external and internal teams for new initiatives
• Drives consensus on technical approach, sets timelines, and leads cross-functional application teams from design through delivery
• Applies software engineering best industry practices to web applications and services
• Provides technical guidance, direction, and decisions to team developing custom and off-the-shelf web applications and services
• Works with Application/Enterprise Architects to establish development and deployment standards, and ensures adherence to technology platform decisions

All you'll need for success

Minimum Qualifications- Education & Prior Job Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Technology, Information Systems (CIS/MIS), Engineering or related technical discipline, or equivalent experience/training
• 8 years of Java Development Environment (JDE) experience
• 2 years Application Programming Interface (ADI) framework / REST development
• 2 years in web services (mid-range) development

 

Preferred Qualifications- Education & Prior Job Experience

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Technology, Information Systems (CIS/MIS), Engineering or related technical discipline, or equivalent experience/training
• 3 years technical leadership of IT personnel
• Airline experience

 

Skills, Licenses & Certifications

• ITIL certification
• Strong expertise in Java 17 and beyond, Spring Boot, and Spring ecosystem frameworks (Spring Data, Spring Kafka, Spring Security, etc.).
• Experience in building and scaling microservices architectures with event-driven systems.
• Hands-on experience with Angular (preferably micro frontend architecture), understanding of responsive UI development, modular design, and frontend-backend integration.
• Experience with Azure Cloud services, deployment, and scaling.
• Strong understanding of resiliency, monitoring, and observability using Azure Monitor and Dynatrace.
• Expertise in MongoDB data modeling, performance optimization, and high availability with experience managing MongoDB Atlas for persistent storage.
• Experience in Test-Driven Development (TDD), automated testing frameworks, and regression testing strategies. Ability to embed test automation within CI/CD workflows.
• Familiarity with Gen AI/LLM and/or Azure OpenAI Services or similar cloud-based AI platforms. Ability to design, prototype, and productionize AI-driven features with attention to scalability, performance, and security.
• Experienced in conducting thorough code reviews to ensure high-quality, maintainable, and testable code. Skilled at identifying areas for improvement and promoting clean, simple, and efficient coding practices.
• Strong technical skills in implementing CI/CD pipelines to ensure automated, reliable, and efficient deployment processes.
• Proficient in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks, with hands-on experience in Terraform for provisioning and managing cloud resources efficiently.
• Experience in service optimizations for performance
• Ability to take large, complex projects and break them down into manageable pieces, develop functional specificat