Principal Software Engineer

4 Days work from office from any of our locations in RI,  Iselin NJ, MA, Pittsburgh PA, or Phoenix AZ

Role is not relocation eligible. 

Principal Software Engineer

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will partner with engineering teams and architecture leaders to deliver high‑quality, forward‑thinking technology solutions. This role provides significant autonomy to lead, design, and implement innovative approaches to complex challenges in the banking industry. You will serve as a peer leader, influencing technical direction and fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and excellence across teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Operate within an Agile environment, applying best practices and collaborating effectively with team members.

• Contribute to solution design discussions, ensuring architectural alignment and successful product outcomes.
• Design, modify, develop, and implement robust software solutions using modern engineering practices.
• Embed quality attributes—such as scalability, maintainability, and manageability—into distributed, service-oriented architectures.
• Apply industry-leading security practices to identify, address, and prevent vulnerabilities throughout the development lifecycle.
• Act as a peer leader by promoting innovation, technical rigor, and adherence to Agile methodologies across the organization.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of hands-on software development experience, including building and supporting commercial software products used by non-technical customers

• Demonstrated experience leading and mentoring software engineers
• 5+ years of experience querying, analyzing, and managing large datasets
• Proficiency in multiple programming languages and at least one modern front-end framework (Angular, React, or Vue). Languages may include Python3, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Golang, C, C++.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP, particularly around managing sensitive assets
• Bash and Linux proficiency
• CI/CD pipeline experience (CircleCI, Jenkins, or similar tools)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Cloud certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect
• Solid understanding of data structures (arrays, dictionaries, linked lists, custom objects, etc.)

Desired Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in financial services, ideally in consumer banking, portfolio management, trading, compliance, or wealth management

• Knowledge of banking systems and custodial/consumer banking operations
• Experience with tools/technologies such as Apache, Lucene, Memcache, RabbitMQ, and NoSQL databases
• Strong security expertise: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, OWASP, secrets rotation
• Experience with microservices architectures, inter-service communication, and API versioning
• Proficiency with OpenAPI/Swagger contract design
• Knowledge of Docker and Kubernetes deployment patterns and 12-factor application principles
• Deep AWS experience (EKS/ECS, RDS/Aurora, API Gateway/ALB, SSM/Secrets Manager, CloudWatch)

Education and Certifications

• Required: Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field

• Preferred: Master’s degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline

Pay Transparency 

The salary range for this position is $ 127,520 - $ 191,280 per year  plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience.   

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of very local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

Equal Employment and Opportunity Employer

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Background Check

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the candidate successfully passing a background check, which may include initial credit, motor vehicle record, public record, prior employment verification, and criminal background checks. Results of the background check are individually reviewed based upon legal requirements imposed by our regulators and with consideration of the nature and gravity of the background history and the job offered. Any offer of employment will include further information.