Principal Engineer

Thrivent•Minneapolis, MN

23h•$161,436 - $218,415•Remote

About The Position

As a Principal Engineer, this role provides technical thought leadership across the insurance portfolio, guiding engineering teams through complex, existing systems while strengthening architecture, patterns, and code reusability. This position remains hands-on—digging into the code, improving how systems are designed, and applying strong engineering patterns rather than prescribing abstract or theoretical solutions. Success in this role requires the ability to influence senior leaders, earn the trust of the engineering community, and help teams design more efficient, reusable, and scalable solutions across the full lifecycle of insurance products.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience
10+ years of experience in an engineering role with demonstrated success leading complex enterprise initiatives across multiple product domains
5+ years of experience leading high performing technology teams
Demonstrated ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences
Demonstrated participation and leadership in the broader technology community with proven ability to influence executive stakeholders and build alignment across diverse teams
Meet or exceed all expectations of a Lead Engineer role

Nice To Haves

Financial Services industry experience
Coach / mentor other team members as appropriate

Responsibilities

Designs and evolves complex systems with an enterprise perspective, understanding dependencies, integration patterns, operational considerations, and downstream impacts across the insurance ecosystem.
Ability to work and problem solve independently on initiatives that align to the broader software engineering strategy.
Uses application and system data, as well as past experiences to inform decision making.
Develops most architecturally impactful components of solutions.
Drop into teams to create engineering structures/patterns that enable the team to work collaboratively and effectively.
Creates new development frameworks and collaborates with the team to create solution components.
Continuously evaluates emerging technologies, engineering practices, and industry trends.
Demonstrates curiosity and learning agility by rapidly assessing new approaches, determining business value, and helping the organization adopt innovations that improve outcomes.
Challenges existing assumptions and drives continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to simplify, modernize, and transform technology solutions.
Provide enterprise-wide technical leadership, influencing architectural direction, engineering practices, and technology investment decisions across multiple product domains.
Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders while building organizational engineering capability.
Participate in product planning and implementation.
Helps product owner to create technical user stories as required/needed.
Provides broad and/or deep expertise in collaborating across teams to create solutions that lead to outcomes.
Lead alignment across business and technology stakeholders, balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term platform strategy to drive enterprise-scale outcomes.
Promote cross team adherence to technology standards and target architecture.
Provides broad and/or deep expertise in collaborating across teams to create solutions that lead to outcomes.
Broker solution design and implementation across product teams to achieve outcomes for the most critical technology and/or strategic priorities for the organization.
Evaluates architecture through the lens of scalability, resiliency, maintainability, security, operational excellence, and long-term business value across interconnected platforms.
Shapes the long-term technology vision by identifying architectural investments, modernization opportunities, and platform capabilities that enable future business growth.
Provides the feedback loop from teams back to operations as new requirements for operationalizing products become necessary.
Define the high-level capabilities requirements for the product/ platform and collaborate with the teams across the organization.
Provide platform technology expertise to teams within product group as well as interdependent teams across the organization.
Partner with the engineering community inside and outside Thrivent in establishing best practices.
Define and share engineering standards across internal teams and collaborate to help engineers apply these patterns to build solutions that achieve outcomes.
Participates in external activities including open-source software contributions and meetups.
Lead the resolution of critical incidents and provides technical leadership in proactively addressing critical production issues/outages.
Able to assess and introduce technology to build more stable, scalable, and resilient software.
Evaluate, recommend and execute new CI/CD components to make the products more stable for a given area.
Build partnership across technical areas to influence when needed.
Consults on the evaluation process for software solutions - provides technical advise on how solutions play into the larger strategy of product areas.
Contribute in criteria evaluation for selecting the right platforms and softwares for the product team.
Provide guidance and reinforcement around established engineering best practices across product groups and the organization.
Provide technical leadership and mentoring to other engineers across the organization.
Provide trainings and demos to address knowledge gaps across teams and product groups.
Engage in the tech community to build the Thrivent technology brand and position as the employer of choice in the market.
Contributes / helps in the recruitment process to hire the right engineering talent for the organization.
Models Thrivent’s leadership competencies: Model the Way, Rally the Team, and Deliver Outcomes.
Supports and/or develops an environment in which Thrivent employees and colleagues are focused on continuous improvement, exceptional employee engagement, and an unwavering commitment to our clients.
Shapes and/or supports a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise and values, ensuring that Thrivent’s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients.