Principal Software Development Engineer

Waters Corporation • Milford, MA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Waters Corporation is seeking a Principal DevOps Engineer to join its Global Software Engineering team in Milford, Massachusetts. The role leads CI/CD platform initiatives across hybrid-cloud and physical-instrument environments, combining hands-on engineering with strategic technical leadership. The team is building a next-generation platform to make laboratory results accessible over the internet and support customers in life, materials, food, and environmental sciences.

The position focuses on developing internal build platforms, primarily in Python, for more than 65 active software projects. The platform is expected to handle over 10,000 jobs and provide clear service-level indicators and objectives, observability, and understandable failure modes. The engineer will own platform APIs, command-line interfaces, and self-service workflows, while improving developer experience and reducing manual work through durable automation.

This is an onsite role three days per week in Milford, Massachusetts: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The role requires collaboration across development value streams and business functions, as well as mentoring engineers and establishing enterprise-wide DevOps and platform engineering practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science or a related field.
• At least 10 years of DevOps or platform engineering experience, including operating systems at scale.
• Strong proficiency in Python and deep understanding of object-oriented design and maintainable software architecture.
• Expertise in Git, including multi-repository and monorepository strategies, branching, and governance enforced by platforms.
• Advanced shell scripting skills in Bash and PowerShell, and fluency with Linux and Windows operating environments.
• Extensive experience designing, implementing, and scaling CI/CD pipelines, with demonstrated results improving release reliability and velocity across multiple teams.
• Track record managing large-scale systems with high availability and performance requirements.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments.
• Demonstrated ability to replace manual workflows with durable, tested automation.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers, influence architectural direction, and set standards across teams.
• Strong programming background and ability to design and deliver production-quality code.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting or integrating with physical instruments or hardware-constrained systems.
• Technical leadership experience in software organizations, influencing direction and improving team performance.
• Knowledge of multiple programming languages and build systems, with the ability to select suitable tools.
• Hands-on experience scaling platforms to manage very high volumes and concurrency.
• Experience in enterprise software development environments, balancing agility with governance.
• Experience with configuration management frameworks such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker, Lambda, and ECS.
• Experience developing large-scale, maintainable Python services and frameworks used across an organization.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and evolve internal build platforms, primarily using Python, serving more than 65 active software projects.
• Build and scale platform services that handle over 10,000 jobs, with clear SLIs/SLOs, observability, and understandable failure modes.
• Own platform APIs, CLIs, and self-service workflows so teams can onboard, build, test, and release without tickets.
• Gather feedback from internal developers, prioritize pain points, and improve developer experience.
• Implement and improve CI/CD pipeline primitives, reusable templates, and release automation.
• Reduce manual work by encoding policy and workflows into the platform, creating guardrails as code, and eliminating tribal knowledge.
• Support integration across development value streams through shared contracts, plugins, and extension points.
• Address hybrid-cloud and on-premises constraints through durable platform abstractions and reduce ticket-driven firefighting.
• Develop platform capabilities for physical-instrument and hardware-constrained workflows where needed.
• Design and deliver production-quality code, using operational experience to inform architecture.
• Mentor engineers and elevate technical capabilities across the organization.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration and integration across systems, teams, and business functions.
• Establish and champion DevOps and platform engineering best practices, standards, and patterns.
• Communicate technical strategies and trade-offs to engineers, leadership, and stakeholders.

What This Job Offers

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