Principal Software Engineer - Platform (hybrid)

Enova International • Chicago, IL

3h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Tech Platform team is the backbone of Enova's engineering organization — building, maintaining, and evolving the foundational platform components that power our products, brands, and engineering teams across the company. Spanning IT, Tech Ops, and Platform Software Engineering, we operate at the intersection of infrastructure, tooling, and developer experience.
As a Principal Engineer on Tech Platform, you will set the technical direction for platform-wide initiatives, drive the adoption and responsible use of AI across the engineering organization, and ensure our architecture evolves to meet the demands of a growing, innovative FinTech company. This is a highly visible role: you will influence how Enova builds software, how engineers experience their tools, and how AI becomes a durable part of our engineering culture.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience designing, implementing, and supporting systems and software in large, complex environments.
• 2+ years operating as an architect or principal-level engineer across multiple connected systems or teams.
• Demonstrated experience building with, advocating for, or deploying AI — including LLMs, agentic tools, or AI-assisted development workflows.
• Strong familiarity with distributed systems architecture, domain-driven design (DDD), and service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles.
• Ability to influence and direct technical strategy across multiple teams without direct authority.
• Excellent analytical and communication skills — comfortable tailoring your message to engineers, product partners, and senior leadership alike.
• Experience working with Lean and Agile development concepts across multiple teams and products.
• Experience with message-oriented middleware, queueing services, or event-driven architectures.
• Proficiency in one or more of Enova's core languages and technologies: Go, Ruby, or AWS.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience on a platform, infrastructure, or developer experience team.
• Experience with cloud platforms, particularly AWS, and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.
• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration technologies (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Contributions to open-source projects, technical publications, or conference presentations.

Responsibilities

• Identify, evaluate, and champion new applications for AI that improve platform reliability, developer productivity, and engineering velocity.
• Represent engineering in cross-functional AI governance and vendor discussions, ensuring platform and engineering perspectives are well-represented.
• Build internal expertise and advocacy around AI — running demos, sharing learnings, and helping teams understand where and how to apply AI responsibly.
• Identify gaps in architecture, technology, tooling, and process — and take ownership of addressing them.
• Ensure that new platform systems and services are sensible, secure, scalable, and aligned with Enova-wide design principles.
• Conduct or lead proof-of-concept efforts with the goal of widening Enova's technology advantages.
• Partner with technical leads across teams to translate strategy into actionable, prioritized work.
• Manage timeline feasibility and proactively communicate changes and pivots to stakeholders and leaders.
• Actively participate in large cross-team forums and enterprise-level initiatives.
• Provide guidance, mentorship, and oversight to Tech Leads and engineers, particularly during incident resolution and complex project work.
• Establish and evangelize Enova-wide design principles and coding standards to ensure consistently high-quality technical solutions.
• Provide perspective on leading industry trends and offer insight into emerging technologies relevant to the platform.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance including mental health benefits
• 401(k) matching plus a roth option (U.S. Based employees only)
• PTO & paid holidays off
• Sabbatical program (for eligible roles)
• Summer hours (for eligible roles)
• Paid parental leave
• DEI groups (B.L.A.C.K. @ Enova, HOLA @ Enova, Women @ Enova, Pride @ Enova, South Asians @ Enova, APEX @ Enova, and Parents @ Enova)
• Employee recognition and rewards program
• Charitable matching and a paid volunteer day

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Associate degree