Software Engineering Principal

The Cigna Group•Bloomfield, CT

1d•$149,000 - $248,300•Remote

About The Position

The job profile for this position is IT Principal, which is a Band 5 Senior Contributor Career Track Role. Excited to grow your career? We value our talented employees, and whenever possible strive to help one of our associates grow professionally before recruiting new talent to our open positions. If you think the open position you see is right for you, we encourage you to apply! Our people make all the difference in our success. Are you a hands-on technical leader who thrives on solving complex problems, building scalable data products, and shaping enterprise strategy? We are looking for a Principal Engineer to drive Data Monetization architecture, accelerate delivery, and elevate engineering excellence across platforms, products, and teams. This is an individual contributor-first role where your impact comes through influence, innovation, technical leadership, and execution—not traditional people management. This role requires a unique combination of engineering depth, product thinking, and business acumen. You will help transform data assets into trusted, reusable, and scalable products that create measurable business value while establishing the technical foundations required to support customer growth, operational excellence, governance, and innovation.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software engineering, architecture, distributed systems, and large-scale platform development ( AWS, Databricks, Data pipelines, Lakehouse architecture, API design, CI/CD, Observability, Data quality, Security and governance, Large-scale distributed systems ).
Proven ability to lead complex, cross-team initiatives and deliver enterprise-scale solutions.
Strong problem-solving skills with demonstrated success navigating ambiguity and organizational complexity.
Experience designing and operating large-scale data platforms, analytics systems, or customer-facing data products.
Demonstrated success establishing engineering standards, governance practices, and technical direction across multiple teams.
Experience driving adoption of reusable platforms, services, APIs, or data products.
Experience applying AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics technologies to create new business capabilities, improve decision-making, and accelerate data product innovation.
Ability to identify opportunities where AI can enhance customer value, automate operational processes, and unlock new data monetization strategies.
Familiarity with modern AI ecosystems, including LLMs, semantic search, vector databases, agent frameworks, and enterprise AI governance practices.

Nice To Haves

Experience operating at enterprise scale across multiple business domains.
Strong understanding of data product management, data monetization, analytics platforms, or customer-facing data services.
Experience with cloud-native architectures, AWS, Databricks, modern data platforms, and distributed systems.
Experience implementing data governance, lineage, observability, quality frameworks, and operational controls.
Track record of mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leaders.
Strong ability to influence without direct authority across engineering, product, and business organizations.
Experience evaluating architecture through the lens of business value, scalability, customer adoption, and FinOps principles.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field.

Responsibilities

Lead architecture and solution design for complex data products, platforms, and cross-team initiatives, ensuring scalable, secure, and resilient systems.
Act as the senior technical authority for high-impact, ambiguous challenges involving data platforms, analytics, governance, and monetization capabilities.
Drive the design and evolution of reusable data products, platform services, APIs, and shared capabilities that can be leveraged across customers and business domains.
Establish and champion engineering standards, data contracts, governance practices, observability, and operational excellence across the ecosystem.
Contribute directly to critical work, including architecture, prototyping, design reviews, complex troubleshooting, and technical problem solving.
Align technical direction across teams to reduce duplication, increase reuse, and strengthen platform consistency and scalability.
Partner with engineering, product, operations, and business leaders to align technology investments with strategic business outcomes.
Drive improvements in data quality, lineage, traceability, governance, and trust across the data lifecycle.
Evaluate technical tradeoffs through the lens of customer value, adoption, scalability, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
Operate as a force multiplier by improving engineering effectiveness, platform maturity, and delivery velocity across teams.
Represent engineering in cross-functional and executive discussions, influencing decisions that shape product and platform strategy.
Mentor senior engineers and help develop the next generation of technical leaders and architects.
Support hiring and leveling decisions and contribute to building strong engineering talent and technical culture.