Software Engineer - Automation

Q2 Software•Austin, TX

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Q2 is a leading provider of digital banking and lending solutions. This role is for a Principal Software Engineer focused on automation. Unlike typical engineering roles where engineers build a specific feature within a product, this position focuses on building the tools and systems that improve the efficiency of the entire company and prevent issues before they impact customers. The Principal level engineer in this role will own the leverage for the entire organization, deciding what needs to exist and building it. This involves identifying and framing ambiguous problems, understanding complex systems, and using code, AI, and systems to remove or replace bottlenecks. The work is described as 'blue-water work' where there are often no existing tools or best practices to follow, requiring invention and the creation of systems that can operate independently. This role is for individuals who thrive on building foundational, impactful systems rather than optimizing existing ones.

Requirements

A builder’s track record at scale: Shipped tools and platforms others now depend on — things that didn’t exist before you built them, used well beyond your own team.
Systems you can hold in your head: Reverse-engineer and understand complex, cross-team systems before you change them.
AI as a build accelerant: Fluency with LLMs, agents, and self-hosted models, and the judgment to know where they create leverage and where they don’t.
Force multiplication: Can name specific engineers you’ve made materially better, and patterns or platforms others now build on.
Strong, general engineering ability: Full-stack and production-quality.
Friction as opportunity: Can’t leave a normalized bottleneck alone.
Typically requires a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field and a minimum of 5 years of related experience; or an advanced degree with 3+ years of experience; or equivalent related work experience.
Strong proficiency in backend and scripting languages (C#, Go, Python).
Experience building and consuming APIs at scale.
Knowledge of containerized applications and cloud-native environments.
Advanced experience with Grafana, Splunk, and telemetry pipelines.
Familiarity with public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Experience designing self-service tools for observability data access.
Strong troubleshooting skills across OS, app, and network layers.
Knowledge of Microsoft Internet Information Services and/or NGINX websites.
Knowledge and troubleshooting of Linux operating systems, particularly Red Hat or CentOS.
Fluent written and oral communication in English.
Authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. (Sponsorship is not available).

Responsibilities

Decide what should exist: Find the highest-leverage problem no one has scoped yet, frame it so engineers and executives both get it, and set the technical direction the team aligns to.
Build it end to end: Whiteboard, prototype, architecture, production — take ambiguous problems (sometimes the overnight fire-drill) all the way to something operable, and go deep in code when it matters.
Build with AI as a first-class tool: Extend our in-house, cloud-hosted agentic AI platform — including self-hosted models that already resolve a meaningful share of alerts with no human in the loop — and use it to make previously impractical problems tractable.
Replace bottlenecks, don’t optimize them: Re-architect the risky, manual pathways people fight today into secure, self-service tools with the right guardrails and audit built in.
Multiply the org: Create the platforms, patterns, and standards other engineers build on; decompose big problems and hand off well-scoped pieces; grow a bench of builders and hold the quality bar on work you didn’t write — so you’re free to go work the next hard thing.
Make the work legible: Socialize designs with senior leaders, defend an architecture to a room of principals and to the exec team in the same afternoon, and keep plans and outcomes visible as you go.
Own what you ship: Including light, event-driven on-call for the things you build.