Principal Engineer - Application Architecture

Fidelity Investments • Boston, MA

1d • $107,000 - $216,000

About The Position

Fidelity Labs is hiring a principal-level engineer to own the technical vision and architectural direction for Foundation Services, an early-stage SaaS platform serving the charitable sector. The platform is built with Angular, Java Spring Boot, AWS, and YugabyteDB. The role combines end-to-end architecture ownership with hands-on engineering contribution and senior technical guidance across the engineering team.

The Principal Engineer reports to the Director of Architecture and is responsible for architectural decisions, engineering standards, and subject-matter expertise across the software and infrastructure stack. The role works closely with Product, UX, Engineering leadership, enterprise architecture teams, and other stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable, maintainable solutions aligned with enterprise standards and security requirements. It also includes evaluating technologies, mentoring engineers, and helping define the platform’s long-term technical direction.

Fidelity Labs is Fidelity Investments’ in-house fintech incubator. Its teams build and test new business ideas, combining a startup-like environment with the scale and stability of an established company. The position is associated with Fidelity Labs’ Boston Seaport headquarters at Commonwealth Pier. Fidelity is transitioning toward a full-time onsite working model through a phased rollout; onsite expectations vary by role and location and may evolve.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 4 years in a principal architect or senior technical leadership role.
• Deep expertise in Java Spring Boot, RESTful API design, and enterprise application architecture patterns.
• Strong frontend architecture knowledge, including Angular, component design, and modular application structures.
• Proven experience designing cloud-native solutions on AWS, including multi-region resiliency, infrastructure strategy, and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Hands-on experience with relational and distributed database systems; familiarity with active/active database strategies such as YugabyteDB or similar.
• Experience producing Architecture Decision Records and driving technical decisions collaboratively with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Solid understanding of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code concepts.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain complex architectural concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• High degree of ownership and autonomy, with the ability to drive long-term technical strategy with minimal direction.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with workflow engine design or BPM platforms such as Temporal or Camunda.
• Familiarity with Fidelity enterprise tooling, including the Fidelity Developer Toolkit or related SDKs.
• Prior work in a startup or incubator environment, defining architecture from the ground up.
• Experience with authorization patterns, fine-grained access control, and enterprise security standards in a SaaS context.
• Background in fintech or financial services platforms, particularly charitable giving or wealth management.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture for Foundation Services, spanning frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure, and data tiers.
• Lead architecture design and decision-making, and document decisions in Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• Define and evolve system architecture, including Experience APIs, Domain APIs, authorization models, workflow engines, and cloud resiliency strategies.
• Establish and enforce standards for API design, Spring Boot patterns, code quality, and security across squads.
• Translate business requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable technical solutions in collaboration with Product, UX, and Engineering leadership.
• Contribute code and provide engineering expertise on Spring Boot, RESTful API standards, coding practices, DevOps tooling, and pipelines.
• Partner with enterprise architecture teams to align the platform with Fidelity’s technology strategy, security requirements, and compliance posture.
• Evaluate technologies and conduct technical spikes to inform platform evolution and architectural decisions.
• Mentor and guide engineers, fostering technical rigor, continuous improvement, and ownership.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health care coverage and emotional well-being support.
• Market-leading retirement benefits.
• Generous paid time off and parental leave.
• Charitable giving employee match program.
• Educational assistance, including student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement, and learning resources.
• Depending on position and eligibility, bonus or other variable compensation may be included.

What This Job Offers

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