Principal Consultant - Software Engineer

Torq • Plano, TX

6h • $140,000 - $170,000

About The Position

At Torq, we work with forward-thinking organizations to design and deliver modern, scalable software solutions. We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help lead these efforts — someone who combines architectural depth, technical breadth, and the ability to mentor and influence other engineers. This is a role for engineers who’ve moved beyond being great individual contributors — and now amplify their impact through teams, design patterns, strategic guidance, and strong technical leadership.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Demonstrated leadership of teams or multiple teams — setting direction, coaching others, and owning outcomes
• Deep experience building and operating distributed systems, microservices, or high-scale platforms
• Expertise in modern cloud environments — AWS, Azure, or GCP — and cloud-native design patterns
• Strong working knowledge of containerization, orchestration, and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD)
• Proven experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and service-layer architectures
• Experience with backend languages like Python, Java, Node.js, or .NET — and the ability to pick up new stacks
• Comfort working in agile environments with cross-functional teams
• Consulting mindset: you bring clarity to chaos, ask the right questions, and know how to deliver value
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — you influence through clarity, not control

Nice To Haves

• Designing real-time, event-driven, or data-intensive systems
• Infrastructure-as-Code tools (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi)
• Strong understanding of software reliability engineering (SRE) practices — observability, alerting, incident response
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Copilot, Claude, Cursor)
• Open-source contributions or experience building internal frameworks / libraries
• Prior consulting or pre-sales engineering experience — especially with complex stakeholder environments
• Experience influencing technical roadmaps, org-wide standards, or platform strategy

Responsibilities

• Define and lead technical direction across complex systems, projects, or client engagements
• Architect scalable, fault-tolerant solutions that solve real business problems
• Work hands-on with modern cloud-native technologies — AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and more
• Design and deliver APIs and service architectures that enable fast, stable delivery and long-term maintainability
• Set and uphold high engineering standards — reliability, testability, performance, and security
• Guide multiple teams through ambiguous technical challenges and trade-offs
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners (product, design, business) to align engineering with business needs
• Coach, mentor, and elevate other engineers — sharing knowledge and driving best practices
• Act as a trusted advisor for clients — bringing credibility, clarity, and calm to high-stakes situations
• Identify emerging technologies and evaluate their application in real-world systems
• Occasionally prototype ideas or lead technical spikes to de-risk and accelerate delivery

Benefits

• Competitive Salary
• Unlimited PTO
• Best-in-class health/vision/dental benefits
• Generous 401K options
• Paid Parental Leave
• Opportunity to be a key player at a highly reputable, fast-growing consulting firm
• High degree of internal mobility and diverse project opportunities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed