Principal Data/Software Engineer

Federal Reserve System • St. Louis, MO

1d

About The Position

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) delivers a suite of payments services and is undergoing a strategic transformation to become a national, enterprise-focused organization. This role is integral to the FedNow Service, a new interbank 24x7x365 real-time gross settlement service with integrated clearing functionality, which aims to transform the U.S. payments landscape. The Principal Data/Software Engineer is a top-level technical expert responsible for software design, coding, testing, debugging, and documentation, possessing full technical knowledge of applications systems analysis and development. This position provides technical leadership on complex projects, regularly interacts with internal project teams and work groups, and requires highly advanced work under minimal supervision. The ideal candidate will have a strong appetite for learning and a passion for technology, innovation, and developing new skills on evolving technologies. While the posted title is Principal Data/Software Engineer, candidates will be placed in an appropriate level within the Software Engineer job family based on their experience.

Requirements

• 8+ years of implementing data-intensive solutions using agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, Lean etc).
• 4+ years working with AWS cloud-based platforms in an enterprise environment.
• Experience designing and building performant, resilient big data solutions.
• Deep expertise in programming languages used in data engineering such as Python and Java.
• Experience developing high performance, high volume, highly available (24/7/365) environments.
• Experience with Agile software engineering (Scrum, Kanban, Lean etc).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Logistics.
• Deep expertise in Python and Java and proficient knowledge of programming languages (JavaScript, XML, JSON, HTML, CSS etc.).
• Proficient knowledge of operating systems (Linux, Unix, Windows).
• Proficient knowledge of database development (SQL, Oracle, DB2).
• Demonstrates independent thinking and decision-making abilities.
• Demonstrates excellent written and oral communication abilities.
• Proficient knowledge of cloud security for application development and delivery.
• Advanced knowledge of object-oriented programming.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with API Development and consumption and microservices architecture.
• Experience with agile development methodology.
• Knowledge of technology project and secure coding standards.
• Strong interpersonal, teamwork and negotiation skills.
• Strong customer service skills.
• Strong problem solving and critical thinking skills.
• Familiarity with usability techniques and best practices.
• Infrastructure as Code (IAC); Terraform.
• Experience with AWS services, and integrating them into an application.
• Experience with leading edge Cloud technologies, such as Kafka, in-memory and NoSQL databases, messaging platforms, memcache etc).

Responsibilities

• Serves as a Principal Data Engineer: to design, develop and implement end-to-end data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and distribution, supporting both batch and streaming workloads in accordance with FedNow and Fed Standards.
• Develops software solutions that are reusable, well-documented, and optimized for Analytics, BI, and AI/ML consumers.
• Implements and manages modern data lake and Lakehouse architectures, including Apache Iceberg table formats.
• Optimizes data platforms for performance, scalability, cost efficiency, and reliability.
• Collaborates closely with architects, product managers, analytics teams, and platform engineers to align data solutions with business needs.
• Defines and enforces data quality standards, implementing automated validation and monitoring.
• Serves as subject matter expert in one or more areas, in addition to being able to engineer across numerous areas of technology.
• Trains and consults cross functionally within the organization on troubleshooting/resolving highly complex and/or highly time critical problems.
• Collaborates with analysts as part of an integrated Agile team to define user requirements and conduct design review for the development of complex and innovative cloud applications using modern internet-scale technologies and Serverless architecture in Cloud.
• Demonstrates skill dexterity; seeking to continuously adapt and employ new technical skills alongside proven staples.
• Ensures that the quality of software developed, maintained and enhanced in-house and installed into production is sufficient to prevent the occurrence of catastrophic defects that cause the customer significant problems, missed deadlines, or interruption to the production environment.
• Ensure compliance with Fed policies, procedures and standards.
• Provides primary or backup production support for applications and components, including but not limited to timely resolution to production problems and processing issues.
• Responsible for software design, coding, testing, debugging, and documentation.
• Provides technical leadership on complex projects.
• Interacts with internal project teams and work groups regularly.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal