Principal Software Engineer

Foundant + smartsimple

3d

About The Position

The Principal Software Engineer is a hands-on member of Foundant’s product engineering team, contributing to development and the ongoing care of production environments while taking on the organization’s hardest technical problems. The role delivers high-quality working code and makes architectural decisions at both the application and service levels that hold up under production load and remain understandable to engineers who maintain them.

The engineer diagnoses systemic and architectural problems spanning components, services, and teams, and proactively resolves or coordinates integration issues. The role also applies AI-assisted development and agentic tools in everyday engineering work to move ideas toward production-ready code and deliver improvements to clients sooner.

The role calls for an experienced senior individual contributor who can move effectively across unfamiliar codebases and domains, lead complex initiatives through influence, treat internal engineering teams as clients, and balance technical decisions with business and client impact. Foundant describes its work as supporting not-for-profits, community foundations, and corporations.

Requirements

• 12 or more years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience as a hands-on developer at principal, staff, or equivalent senior individual-contributor level.
• Demonstrated mastery of architectural patterns and the judgment to apply them appropriately at application and service levels.
• Proven expertise in Java, Spring Boot, TypeScript, Node.js, and React, with experience building and shipping production software.
• Extensive full-stack experience building scalable RESTful applications with React and a Java/Spring Boot backend.
• Advanced proficiency with large-scale relational database management systems (RDBMS).
• Experience with analytical systems and databases that process large volumes of data.
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development practices and tools.
• Professional experience using AI-assisted development tools in production work; Foundant uses Claude Code, and deep expertise with a comparable tool is acceptable.
• Experience developing cloud-based SaaS applications.
• Experience owning production services, including reliability, performance, and incident response.
• Extensive experience diagnosing and debugging complex technical issues across multiple components and services, including use of debugging and profiling tools.
• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working with AWS is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain software and support ongoing production environments as part of the product engineering team.
• Take on difficult technical problems and deliver high-quality working code.
• Own application- and service-level architectural decisions, accounting for production load and maintainability.
• Diagnose systemic and architectural issues across components and services, including issues without an obvious single-team cause.
• Proactively resolve integration issues or coordinate across team boundaries.
• Use AI-assisted development and agentic tooling in daily engineering work to accelerate delivery of production-ready improvements.
• Lead engineers through complex initiatives by influence, earning trust and communicating direction clearly.
• Treat internal engineering teams as clients and consider the reliability impact of shared services on foundations and nonprofits.
• Balance technical decisions against business and community impact.
• Apply sound judgment to AI-generated code and help colleagues use AI-assisted development responsibly.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits.
• Tuition and lifestyle reimbursements.
• Mindfulness and fitness initiatives.
• Flexible PTO policy.
• Professional and personal development opportunities, including collaboration across teams and exposure to diverse ideas, expertise, and projects.
• Internal mobility and opportunities to explore new roles, leadership opportunities, or departments.
• Autonomy and responsibility in approaching work creatively and independently.
• Employee recognition.

What This Job Offers

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