Principal Software Development Engineer

This is a remote position.

About Unistam Technology Services

Unistam Technology Services provides technology and engineering services to enterprise clients. Our teams design, build, and support the software and infrastructure our customers depend on every day. We hire experienced engineers, give them real ownership, and expect clear thinking in return.

Position Summary

Unistam is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to act as a senior technical authority in our Boardman engineering organization. You will set the architecture for business-critical platforms, establish engineering standards across teams, and stay hands-on with the most complex design and delivery work. You will work closely with product, operations, and executive stakeholders to turn business priorities into scalable, secure, and supportable solutions, and you will help develop the engineers around you.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture and technical direction

• Define and maintain the architecture and technical roadmap for large-scale distributed services, from initial design through production operation.
  
• Lead design reviews and weigh tradeoffs among scalability, reliability, security, cost, and delivery timelines. Record key decisions so teams can build on them.
  
• Assess build-versus-buy and technology selection decisions, and present recommendations to senior leadership.
  

Delivery

• Write and review production code in the most critical areas of the platform, and build prototypes to reduce risk before teams commit to an approach.
  
• Lead multi-team initiatives from open-ended problem statements to defined milestones, owners, and outcomes.
  
• Establish and uphold standards for code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, and secure development.
  

Operational excellence

• Set service-level objectives, and lead incident response, root cause analysis, and corrective action on high-severity issues.
  
• Drive improvements in reliability, performance, and cost efficiency, including capacity planning for growth.
  
• Work with security and compliance partners to meet regulatory and client requirements.
  

Leadership and collaboration

• Mentor senior and staff engineers, and contribute to hiring, interviewing, and onboarding.
  
• Explain complex technical topics clearly to engineers, product owners, and non-technical executives.
  
• Take part in client and partner technical discussions as needed.
  

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  
• 12 or more years of professional software development experience, including at least 4 years in a technical lead, architect, or staff-level role.
  
• Expert-level proficiency in at least one of Java, C#, Go, or Python, with working knowledge of a second language.
  
• Proven experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems, microservices, and APIs (REST, gRPC) at scale.
  
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including containers, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code such as Terraform.
  
• Strong grounding in data modeling and performance tuning across relational and NoSQL databases.
  
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, test automation strategy, and monitoring and observability tools.
  
• A record of leading technical initiatives that span multiple teams and of mentoring senior engineers.
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in a technical field.
  
• Experience in high-availability, mission-critical enterprise environments.
  
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture and streaming platforms such as Kafka.
  
• Working knowledge of security and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST).
  
• Professional cloud certification, such as AWS Solutions Architect Professional or Azure Solutions Architect Expert.
  
• Experience integrating machine learning services into production systems.
  
• Patents, publications, open-source contributions, or conference presentations.
  

Benefits

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary commensurate with experience, plus an annual performance-based bonus.
  
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents, with employer contribution toward premiums.
  
• 401(k) plan with company match.
  
• Paid time off, company holidays, and paid sick leave.
  
• Paid parental leave.
  
• Company-paid life insurance and short- and long-term disability coverage.
  
• Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options.
  
• Employee Assistance Program.
  
• Annual learning budget covering training, certifications, and conferences.
  
• Hybrid schedule with flexibility for focused work.
  
• Relocation assistance for eligible candidates.
  

Equal Opportunity Employer

Unistam Technology Services is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We provide reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities on request.