Principal Software Engineer (Autonomy Services)

Caterpillar•Irving, TX

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. Help Build the Future of Caterpillar At Caterpillar, technology always has a purpose, which is to solve our customers’ toughest challenges. Through Cat Technology, we are solving problems by building the intelligence layer that connects machines, data, and people to make jobsites safer, more productive, and more sustainable. By combining deep domain expertise in physical systems with software, connectivity, autonomy, and AI, we deliver solutions that work in the real world—on real jobsites, at global scale. You’ll build and deploy against one of the most unique data foundations - over 1.6 million connected assets generating real-world data daily. These data and platform capabilities are enabling the development of AI models, edge computing architectures, and software systems that scale across fleets, products, and industries. The result will be a new generation of machines that continuously learn, improve, and deliver performance at scale.

Requirements

Software Product Design/Architecture: Knowledge of software product design; ability to convert market requirements into software product design and strategic technical direction.
Software Product Technical Knowledge: Knowledge of technical aspects of software products; ability to design, configure, and integrate technical aspects of software products.
Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.
Effective Communications: Understanding of effective communication concepts, tools, and techniques; ability to effectively transmit, receive, and accurately interpret ideas, information, and needs through appropriate communication behaviors.
Strong experience building backend microservices and APIs (REST, gRPC, event-driven) for autonomy or real-time systems
Experience in autonomy systems, robotics, simulation, or real-time control platforms
Expertise in designing scalable cloud-native architectures, service contracts, and integration patterns
Strong backend development using Java or Python for APIs, orchestration, and data processing
Deep understanding and application of design patterns
Experience with AI-assisted/agentic development workflows and validating AI-generated code
Understanding of high-reliability systems (async workflows, retries, idempotency, observability)

Nice To Haves

Experience building production AI agents using Python
Experience with agent orchestration frameworks such as LangChain or LangGraph
Experience integration LLMs with external tools, APIs, databases, and retrieval systems
Experience designing evals, guardrails, and monitoring for agent reliability
Multi-agent workflow design and memory/context management
Prompt optimization, latency reduction, and cost control
MLOps or model deployment experience

Responsibilities

Define and drive architecture for backend microservices and APIs (Java, Spring Boot, Python) supporting integration, data exchange, and platform services
Lead design and delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performance cloud-native services and integration adapters
Establish and enforce API standards, service contracts, and integration patterns (REST, gRPC, event-driven) across distributed systems
Provide technical leadership on complex system design, service scalability, and integration challenges
Review architecture, designs, code, APIs, and data contracts to ensure reliability, performance, security, observability, and maintainability
Drive engineering excellence across architecture, testing, CI/CD, observability, and operational readiness
Mentor engineers and elevate team capability in microservices design, API development, and backend engineering best practices
Guide teams in building robust integration services, adapter layers, and artifact/data exchange workflows
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define API interfaces, integration contracts, and platform service boundaries
Identify and drive platform simplification, reuse, and organizational efficiency improvements