Principal Engineer

Bank of America•Charlotte, NC

About The Position

At Bank of America, the Principal Engineer defines and leads the engineering approach for solutions at the program or portfolio level to deliver significant business outcomes. The role continuously improves solution design, quality, and reuse, and delivers technology enablers that improve development efficiency. It requires familiarity with at least one engineering area and serving as a go-to technical reference across the organization, while helping improve technical competencies through recruitment and development activities. The Principal Engineer leads the design, development, and support of enterprise payment platforms, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with business objectives. The role partners with business and technology stakeholders to deliver payment solutions, modernize platforms using APIs, Kafka, messaging technologies, and microservices, and establish engineering and architectural standards. The individual provides technical leadership, oversees critical releases, mentors engineering teams, resolves complex technical issues, and influences technology strategy across organizations while promoting continuous improvement, operational excellence, and innovation. As the senior technical leader for the payments and External Account Management platform, this role defines technology strategy, drives architecture decisions, ensures platform reliability, and leads delivery of scalable, secure, high-performing payment solutions. It provides leadership across multiple engineering teams and works closely with Product, Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Operations, and Business stakeholders. The role also promotes cloud-native and event-driven architectures and the use of AI and related technologies to accelerate delivery, with complete review and monitoring of AI outputs and delivery.

Requirements

12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience with enterprise payments platforms.
Deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, microservices, Oracle, and Kafka.
Strong knowledge of microservices architectures and high-volume transaction systems.
Proven ability to lead large-scale modernization and transformation initiatives.
Strong communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with cloud platforms, containerization technologies, CI/CD pipelines, and DevSecOps practices.
AI model usage and agentic framework adoption.
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Responsibilities

Serve as the senior technical leader for the payments and External Account Management platform and ecosystem.
Define technology strategy, drive architecture decisions, ensure platform reliability, and lead delivery of scalable, secure, high-performing payment solutions.
Provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams and partner with Product, Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Operations, and Business stakeholders.
Modernize payment capabilities and deliver mission-critical services.
Establish engineering standards, mentor senior developers, and drive innovation across cloud-native and event-driven architectures.
Drive use of AI and related technologies to accelerate change and delivery while ensuring complete review and monitoring of AI outputs and delivery.
Develop the engineering approach for the program or portfolio solution and work with Architecture to develop, analyze, and deliver technical enablers.
Lead planning, definition, and design of complex features spanning multiple teams, and explore solution alternatives.
Create approaches for designing complex technology and developing solutions.
Provide technical oversight for solution development teams, including design reviews and code within the role's domain.
Define the technology tool stack for the solution within internally approved and supported technologies.
Explore state-of-the-art technologies to improve development efficiency, test/QA coverage, and release management.
Lead and own end-to-end test strategy, creation, adherence, and integration between teams for a program or portfolio solution.
Oversee critical releases, resolve complex technical issues, and influence technology strategy across multiple organizations.
Promote continuous improvement, operational excellence, and innovation.