Principal Software Engineer — Commerce, Payments & Connected Platforms, Agentic AI

Panasonic•Irvine, CA

About The Position

Panasonic Avionics is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to define technical direction for platforms connecting e-commerce, payments, data, cloud services, and connected hardware. This senior individual-contributor role combines architectural leadership and hands-on engineering, with influence across multiple engineering teams. The engineer will translate ambiguous business needs into technical strategies, improve the quality of customer-facing systems, and guide practical applications of agentic AI to support engineering productivity, operational reliability, and customer experiences. The role covers commerce and payment capabilities, including catalog, pricing, checkout, order management, payment orchestration, and reconciliation. It also involves designing cloud-to-device workflows for constrained computing, intermittent connectivity, software and firmware compatibility, remote configuration, and fleet observability. The engineer will establish data models, contracts, and pipelines, and address offline operations, synchronization, retries, duplicate events, partial failures, and recovery across cloud and edge environments. The Principal Software Engineer will set quality and reliability standards, contribute prototypes and production code, review critical designs, resolve difficult technical problems, mentor senior and staff engineers, and influence decisions across organizational boundaries. The position also involves identifying and delivering valuable agentic AI use cases with suitable evaluation, permission controls, human oversight, and auditability. The stated annual salary range is $171,000–$268,000. The final offer may vary based on factors including knowledge, skills, experience, and location.

Requirements

Significant experience building and operating production software systems, typically 12 or more years, including technical leadership across multiple teams or major platform initiatives.
Demonstrated ability to define architecture, lead adoption, and remain accountable for production outcomes.
Deep expertise in distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, data modeling, and cloud platforms.
Strong experience in commerce or payments, with working understanding of transaction lifecycles, consistency, idempotency, and reconciliation.
Experience integrating software with connected devices, embedded platforms, or other hardware-dependent systems.
Strong programming skills in one or more production languages, such as Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, C++, or TypeScript.
Experience improving reliability through observability, performance engineering, automated testing, and incident analysis.
Ability to influence without direct authority, navigate ambiguity, and communicate clearly with engineering, product, operations, and business leaders.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with payment gateways, processors, tokenization, fraud controls, and systems operating within PCI DSS scope.
Experience with edge computing, offline transaction workflows, device telemetry, remote software updates, or large connected-device fleets.
Experience designing data platforms that support analytics, experimentation, personalization, or machine learning.
Practical experience building LLM-powered applications or agentic workflows, including tool integration, evaluation, and production monitoring.
Experience in travel, aviation, mobility, retail, or other environments where digital services depend on physical infrastructure.
Track record of simplifying complex platforms and delivering incremental modernization without disrupting customers.

Responsibilities

Own architecture and the technical roadmap across commerce, payments, and connected platforms; align teams on system boundaries, interfaces, and engineering standards.
Guide design of catalog, pricing, checkout, order management, payment orchestration, and reconciliation capabilities, emphasizing transaction correctness, security, and failure recovery.
Design cloud-to-device workflows that account for constrained compute, intermittent connectivity, software and firmware compatibility, remote configuration, and fleet observability.
Define event models, data contracts, and pipelines that support operational intelligence, analytics, personalization, and traceability across customer and transaction journeys.
Address offline operation, synchronization, retries, duplicate events, partial failures, and recovery across cloud and edge environments.
Establish measurable reliability and performance targets, automated validation, representative integration testing, and release-readiness criteria; help reduce escaped defects and improve detection and recovery.
Identify and deliver focused agentic AI use cases, such as test generation, incident investigation, and operational assistance, with appropriate evaluations, permission boundaries, human oversight, and auditability.
Build prototypes, contribute production code, review critical designs, and resolve difficult technical problems.
Mentor senior and staff engineers, develop technical leaders, and drive decisions across organizational boundaries through clear reasoning and evidence.
Communicate tradeoffs among customer experience, delivery speed, reliability, cost, and long-term maintainability.
Support teams in executing against clear technical strategies and improving engineering quality, performance, operational readiness, and decision-making.

Benefits

Unlimited paid time off for exempt salaried employees; non-exempt hourly employees accrue vacation, sick, and personal days, with accrual increasing with tenure.
11 company-paid holidays annually and a paid company-wide U.S. shutdown between Christmas and New Year.
Medical insurance offerings through Aetna and Kaiser (California and Hawaii).
Dental PPO and DMO options.
Vision insurance through EyeMed or VSP.
401(k) with a 50% match on up to 8% contribution, fully vested from day one.
Wellness program and counseling services.
Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account options.
Life insurance for employee, spouse, and child; AD&D insurance; long-term and short-term disability insurance.
Critical illness insurance and accident insurance.
Legal assistance, pet insurance, and identity theft protection.
Dependent care FLSA, education assistance, commuter program, employee purchase program, and service award program.