Principal Software Engineering

Transamerica•Cedar Rapids, IA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Engineering Productivity & Delivery Platform Lead is a high-level individual contributor who concurrently designs, implements, and drives improvement across software delivery discipline, automation guardrails, and engineering maturity throughout the organization. This role operates at a Principal level and serves as the convergence point between Architecture, Platform Engineering, DevOps, and application delivery teams. This is a deeply technical position focused on proactively establishing engineering guardrails, enforcing standards through automation, and facilitating measurable improvements in reliability and consistency across all projects—whether through direct ownership or cross-functional influence.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, math, engineering, or other technical field, or equivalent experience
Ten years of recent hands-on software engineering experience
Demonstrated experience operating at a Staff or Principal level
Deep expertise in Git branching strategies and pull request governance
Eight years of experience designing and improving CI/CD pipelines or software automation
Proven experience enforcing engineering standards across multiple teams
Proficiency automating and building with Amazon Cloud services
Experience building or integrating automation tools (e.g. bots, webhooks, policy enforcement)
Experience coordinating DevOps enablement across platform and delivery teams
Strong systems thinking and ability to diagnose cross-team delivery issues
Expertise in programming languages/frameworks (e.g. Typescript, Python, .NET/C#, JAVA, OOP, Functional Programming, Spring Framework, J2EE Development, Service Oriented Architecture)
Experience leveraging continuous integration/development tools (e.g. Harness, Jenkins, Docker, Containers, ECS, Kubernetes, container automation, and serverless) in a CI/CD pipeline
Expertise in build and deployment tools (e.g. Visual Studio, Git/Bitbucket, Maven, Jenkins, Nexus, Nunit)
Recent coding experience in production systems
Attention to detail and results oriented, with a strong customer focus
Ability to work as part of a team and independently
Analytical and problem-solving skills
Technical communication skills and the ability to present information to all levels of the organization
Ability to prioritize workload to meet tight deadlines

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree
Knowledge of the financial services industry
Experience in regulated or enterprise environments (financial services, healthcare, etc.)
Experience integrating AI tools into development workflows
Experience contributing to internal developer platforms
Familiarity with GitOps, policy-as-code, and automated compliance enforcement
Experience defining engineering maturity models, quality frameworks, enterprise standards

Responsibilities

Proactively design and implement enforceable delivery standards across repositories; increase engineering productivity, drive standardization of branching strategies, PR governance, testing expectations, and release conformity through direct contribution and cross-team influence.
Concurrently design, build, and maintain pull request automation, AI-assisted review workflows, and policy-as-code guardrails; implement bots, webhooks, and automation that enforce engineering standards across locally owned and externally influenced capabilities.
Partner with delivery teams as needed to remediate systemic issues in real-time; refactor unstable patterns, normalize repository structures, and facilitate adoption of improved practices.
Lead coordination with internal DevOps, Platform Engineering, Architecture, and Engineering Excellence functions to proactively align strategic standards with implementation across all capability areas.
Establish and continuously evolve engineering maturity benchmarks; actively track engineering cycle times, deployment success rates, merge conflict frequency, AI/automation adoption, and release stability.
Drive enhancement of CI/CD templates through direct implementation and partnership with Platform and DevOps teams; proactively integrate AI tools into engineering workflows where they improve productivity, quality, and resiliency.
Translate architecture decisions into enforceable automation and actively facilitate consistent adoption of shared CI/CD and platform capabilities across the department.
Deliver transparent reporting and improvement roadmaps; proactively identify systemic delivery risks and implement corrective measures through direct action or organizational influence.

Benefits

Compensation
Benefits
Competitive Pay
Bonus for Eligible Employees
Benefits Package
Pension Plan
401k Match
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Tuition Reimbursement
Disability Insurance
Medical Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Employee Discounts
Career Training & Development Opportunities
Health and Work/Life Balance Benefits
Paid Time Off starting at 160 hours annually for employees in their first year of service.
Ten (10) paid holidays per year (typically mirroring the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) holidays).
Be Well Company holistic wellness program, which includes Wellness Coaching and Reward Dollars
Parental Leave – fifteen (15) days of paid parental leave per calendar year to eligible employees with at least one year of service at the time of birth, placement of an adopted child, or placement of a foster care child.
Adoption Assistance
Employee Assistance Program
Back-Up Care Program
PTO for Volunteer Hours
Employee Matching Gifts Program
Employee Resource Groups
Inclusion and Diversity Programs
Employee Recognition Program
Referral Bonus Programs