Lead Principal Application Software Engineer

Oracle•United States,

About The Position

The Lead Principal Application Software Engineer drives cross-group platform initiatives, such as identity, configuration, and API gateways, with significant impact on reliability, performance, and compliance. The role anticipates and resolves ambiguous distributed-systems problems; sets compatibility and deprecation strategies to minimize downstream risk; establishes shared observability frameworks, service-level objectives, and capacity models used by multiple teams; and defines architectural guardrails, security controls, and reference implementations in partnership with SRE and security. This role leads software design, implementation, optimization, architecture, testing, and support across projects and products. It serves as a subject matter expert, coaches engineers and peers, conducts architecture and code reviews, and guides teams in secure development, API lifecycle management, performance, scalability, reliability, and customer issue resolution. The position also leads strategic and cross-functional initiatives, advanced problem-solving, maintenance operations, continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and talent-development activities. Minimum qualifications include 15 years of software development experience, or a qualifying degree and lower experience threshold: 11 years with a bachelor's degree or B.Tech, 9 years with a master's degree or M.Tech, or 7 years with a doctorate in a listed or related field. Candidates must also have 10 years of programming and/or scripting experience and 6 years of database experience. Preferred qualifications include higher software-development experience thresholds, Oracle product knowledge, at least 2 years in a technical lead role, 3 years working with operating budgets and/or project financials, and 5 years with cloud platforms.

Requirements

At least 15 years of software development experience; alternatively, 11 years with a relevant bachelor's degree or B.Tech, 9 years with a relevant master's degree or M.Tech, or 7 years with a relevant doctorate.
A qualifying degree must be in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or a related field, where applicable to the experience alternative.
10 years of experience with programming and/or scripting languages, such as SQL, C/C++, or JavaScript.
6 years of experience with databases.
Ability to lead cross-group platform initiatives and address complex distributed-systems problems.
Expertise in software design, architecture, development, testing, optimization, APIs, security, observability, reliability, and scalability.
Ability to coach and mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across teams.
Ability to collaborate with stakeholders, customers, security teams, and leadership.

Nice To Haves

Preferred software development experience of 16 years; alternatively, 12 years with a relevant bachelor's degree or B.Tech, 10 years with a relevant master's degree or M.Tech, or 8 years with a relevant doctorate.
Demonstrated knowledge of Oracle products and the ability to educate customers on their effective use.
2 years of experience in a technical lead role, with or without direct reports.
3 years of experience working with operating budgets and/or project financials.
5 years of experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google, or Oracle Cloud.

Responsibilities

Set group-wide guardrails for platform interoperability, security controls, and client library governance.
Own cross-group programs such as identity, configuration, and API gateway standards, delivering measurable reliability and performance impact.
Establish shared observability frameworks and rollout policies adopted by multiple teams, and manage deprecation risk.
Lead software initiatives to design solutions, analyze requirements, and define foundational code for new projects or prototypes.
Improve software development lifecycle execution and coach engineers across teams.
Guide software features and enhancements according to design specifications, ensure accessibility, and document software design and code.
Lead process, architecture, and code reviews across projects and products or services.
Debug and troubleshoot highly complex software issues using modern or emerging technologies.
Optimize software testing, quality assurance, error logging, monitoring, and observability.
Promote innovation, research, and relevant industry practices to optimize performance.
Resolve complex API functionality and integration issues, and implement API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.
Lead the design and development of software, systems, and services; define scope and review, influence, and approve design recommendations.
Provide architecture guidance, domain expertise, mentorship, and coaching to teams and peers.
Conduct complex architectural reviews and ensure adherence to architectural standards.
Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align software architecture with business and customer goals.
Implement performance optimization and scalability strategies in software design.
Research and evaluate technologies for architectural enhancements and translate findings into organizational decisions and plans.
Lead investigation of customer issues, root causes, and mitigation, and explain the rationale for solutions.
Provide expert technical guidance to customers and help mitigate recurrence of reported issues.
Advocate for customer interests and suggest product enhancements based on feedback.
Coordinate across business lines to support customer satisfaction through timely issue resolution and effective communication.
Guide strategic customer issue and defect handling solutions and training processes.
Investigate and troubleshoot complex, broadly reaching maintenance issues and secure customer agreement on short- and long-term solutions.
Partner with security and leadership teams to establish and improve development practices and coding standards, coaching less experienced team members.
Participate in peer reviews and lead initiatives that ensure quality and adherence to acceptance criteria.
Apply and share industry best practices in software development.
Implement complex secure development practices and solutions, using automation to help prevent vulnerabilities and augment manual reviews.
Lead periodic system maintenance and testing, including upgrades and patches for critical vulnerabilities.
Drive automation, testing, and debugging improvements to maintain system availability, health, support, and reliability.
Direct timelines, deliverables, and budgets when applicable for high-impact initiatives, adapting plans to changing priorities.
Influence cross-functional leaders and external stakeholders, build partnerships, and incorporate diverse perspectives.
Lead advanced problem-solving, serve as an escalation point, identify root causes, and implement solutions that prevent recurrence.
Provide thought leadership, monitor emerging trends and standards, and promote continuous learning and knowledge sharing.
Develop and implement process improvements, evaluate their effectiveness, and design metrics to measure success.
Advise on talent needs and organizational talent strategy, and contribute to interviews, candidate assessment, and hiring decisions.