Main Responsibilities and Required Skills for Principal Software Engineer
A Principal Software Engineer is a senior individual who designs, develops, and maintains secure and scalable software code or tools. They lead a team of developers to meet the requirements of the product. In this blog post we describe the primary responsibilities and the most in-demand hard and soft skills for Principal Software Engineers.
Get market insights and compare skills for other jobs here.
Main Responsibilities of Principal Software Engineer
The following list describes the typical responsibilities of a Principal Software Engineer:
Adhere to
Adhere to and drive modern software engineering practices through design and code reviews.
Adhere to higher standard of quality than usual in the face of time to market pressures.
Analyze
Analyze and debug complex systems.
Analyze and resolve technical and application problems.
Apply
Apply UML model-based approach to create software requirements and design patterns.
Architect
Architect both software and systems to support the vision with a bias for simplicity and automation.
Architect changes, adopt new technologies and drive constant technical improvement.
Assist
Assist development team on debugging and solving issues discovered during test.
Assist in building the team by participating in recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and mentoring.
Automate
Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting.
Build
Build a back-end infrastructure using cloud-based technologies.
Build and maintain web applications, services and APIs with Ruby on Rails.
Build high quality code following unit testing and test driven development.
Build report interfaces and data feeds.
Build software prototypes and conduct experiments to evaluate alternative architectures.
Carry out
Carry out duties in compliance with established business policies.
Coach
Coach and mentor engineers on best practices and technology direction.
Collaborate
Collaborate across all units to understand business strategy & align cloud services.
Collaborate both inter-team and cross-functionally to deploy controls solutions using C++.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver product features in an Agile environment.
Communicate
Communicate across many levels of the company, and also externally, in a clear, concise manner.
Contribute to
Contribute and deploy plugins / extensions to various marketplaces.
Contribute productively to a fast-paced agile / scrum software development team.
Contribute to and support a variety of development and test phase efforts.
Contribute to building security tools and define industry best practices.
Contribute to the design and architecture to enable secure, scalable and maintainable software.
Create
Create and deploy applications on multiple platform marketplaces.
Create or maintain technical design documentation.
Create project and architecture documentation as requested.
Debug
Debug, conduct root cause analysis, diagnose defects.
Define
Define and implement software requirements and designs and review software.
Define and perform various search language layer optimizations / transformations.
Define, Architect, design, deliver and operate new software and features for the DNA Spaces platform.
Define, architect, & develop features and gameplay functionality in Unity and C#.
Define best practices and standards for database design.
Define the scope of large efforts with minimal direction.
Deliver
Deliver high quality software through working in a dynamic, team-focused Agile / Scrum environment.
Deploy
Deploy automation for provisioning and operating infrastructure on a large scale.
Deploy state-of-the art perception DNN models to embedded platforms.
Design
Design and build tools and services for use within our AWS cloud environment.
Design and develop easy-to-use robust features that perform and scale in a multi-tenant environment.
Design and develop high-quality code to improve platform reliability, availability, and scalability.
Design and develop software code or tools to assess device security risk levels.
Design and develop testing automation tools that improve efficiency.
Design and implement core, high-performance, scalable software components.
Design and implement efficient algorithms for processing large volume of data.
Design systems that prioritize the customer perspective and experience.
Determine
Determine and onboard Cloud based application testing technologies and decisions.
Determine overall architectural principles, frameworks, and standards.
Develop
Develop and code review modular and well documented software.
Develop and execute automated tests of the highest complexity and difficulty.
Develop and execute manual test suites for websites and web applications using with webservices.
Develop high-quality software design and architecture.
Develop necessary code to support the advancement of the data warehouse.
Develop reusable architectural components for multiple projects.
Develop software unit-tests, integration tests, and acceptance tests.
Develop UI mock-ups and prototypes that clearly illustrate how experiences function.
Discover
Discover and prevent cross-tenant and privacy failures prior to customer impact.
Document
Document and maintain software functionality.
Document and resolve issues as directed.
Draft
Draft written or email responses when necessary to routine letters.
Drive
Drive and participate in code and document reviews, providing mentoring where it makes sense.
Drive the design and implementation of highly scalable and available distributed solutions.
Drive the development and evolution of our.
Drive the strategy for Cloud based solutions, data communication, and security design.
Edit
Edit high converting Video Sales Letters.
Engage with
Engage with cloud providers as needed.
Ensure
Ensure QA team are kept up to date with all communication as appropriate.
Ensure scalability and testability of the product and its subsystems.
Ensure security coding practices and security system fundamentals across multiple organizations.
Ensure that the pump is set up for pumping in a safe manner, clear of power lines, etc..
Ensure that time sheets are accurately and legibly completed.
Establish
Establish improvements to increase efficiency.
Establish relationships with the team members.
Execute
Execute a best in class PR and social strategy.
Facilitate
Facilitate and drive engineering best practice conversations across the organization.
Focus on
Focus on user experience and system ergonomics.
Gather
Gather and document software requirements and specifications.
Generate
Generate clear ideas, concepts and designs of creative assets from beginning to end.
Generate systems software engineering policies, standards and procedures.
Get
Get excited by the challenge of hard technical problems.
Give
Give tech talks about systems that you develop and challenging problems you resolve.
Help
Help define and enforce standards regarding architecture, quality, and performance.
Help execute sprints to complete.
Help lead engineering efforts by authoring technical design documentation.
Help set the future technical course for our production systems, technology stack, and architecture.
Help to shape product vision.
Identify
Identify and encourage areas for growth and improvement.
Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to these problems.
Identify & interpret KPIs for continuous improvement across multiple organizations.
Identify large-scale engineering trials in Gousto's growth, and own the roadmap to address them.
Illustrate
Illustrate design ideas using storyboards, process flows and sitemaps.
Implement
Implement new features and test and analyze performance of existing and new features.
Implement risk mitigation plan(s) / corrective actions.
Implement the physical database environment, business and presentation layers.
Improve
Improve, optimize, troubleshoot, test and maintain our codebase.
Improve query performance through optimizations, caching, concurrency, and scaling.
Influence
Influence the technical direction for the team and broader engineering organization.
Inherit
Inherit legacy or troubled software products and redesign, rebuild, and modernize them.
Innovate
Innovate and build elegant Web UI features from scratch leveraging React.
Integrate
Integrate new technologies and tools.
Interact with
Interact well with team leaders, peers, junior staff and other managers.
Lead
Lead and perform component and application design of cloud-native services on the AWS platform.
Lead a team of developers to meet the complex requirements on a demanding schedule.
Lead design performance and cost trade-offs for proposed engineering changes.
Lead New Product Development.
Lead other engineers on the team to elevate technology and consistently apply best practices.
Lead technical discussions and provide innovation throughout the process.
Lead the team to make technology and architectural tradeoffs.
Learn
Learn and leverage new programming languages, design methodologies, and technologies.
Leverage
Leverage professional experience to recommend best practices, systems, and architectures.
Maintain
Maintain and update the platform and integrated systems.
Maintain high standards of software quality by establishing good practices and habits.
Manage
Manage and lead multiple teams of software engineers.
Manage completion of own work assignments and coordinates work with others.
Manage workload of area effectively so that targets and goals are achieved by the team.
Mentor
Mentor and coach other team members improving overall technical and domain capabilities.
Mentor and grow the most senior engineers within our teams.
Mentor and support juniors in the team to get success.
Mentor and support the other engineers within the squad.
Mentor other developers and contribute to the growth and development of our team.
Mentor other engineers to help foster a cohesive team environment.
Own
Own and be responsible for multiple components in the system and invent them from scratch.
Own and lead the vision, strategy, and adoption of cloud.
Participate in
Participate in Agile ceremonies, Sprint planning, Backlog grooming, and routine stand-ups.
Participate in all phases of the software development cycle as part of a Scrum team.
Participate in design and code reviews with other engineers.
Participate in peer reviews.
Participate in pre-solution work for new initiatives to outline high-level solutions.
Participate in Product discussions to advise on and influence the Product Roadmap.
Perform
Perform Investigations on issues found in the field that are Embedded / Firmware / Hardware related.
Perform systems administration duties.
Plan
Plan and coordinate cross-team activities groups to complete assignments.
Present
Present and defend architectural, design and technical choices.
Present at design reviews.
Present findings and recommendations to key decision makers at various management levels.
Prototype
Prototype and evaluate alternative solutions on the target hardware and virtual platforms.
Provide
Provide clear, actionable feedback for project team members.
Provide code reviews and design feedback for teammates.
Provide mentoring to junior and senior staff.
Provide technical leadership and mentoring to junior team members.
Provide technology leadership and mentoring to the development team on multiple projects.
Provide vision to future roadmaps and architecture for the payments tech team.
Recommend
Recommend new technologies to ensure solution scalability, maintainability and quality.
Record
Record in delivering and executing impactful and innovative campaigns across multiple channels.
Recruit
Recruit talent that will help us continue to drive world class data & analytics operations.
Replacement
Replacement design, development and troubleshooting.
Report
Report and advise senior leadership on specific issues uncovered and ideas of solutions.
Research
Research and prototype solutions.
Review
Review and develop improvements to system requirements and business processes.
Review system requirements and business processes.
Scope
Scope out large tasks and system with minimal direction, and help with delegation of that work.
Sign
Sign, develop, and test software to satisfy business requirements in a wide range of products.
Solve
Solve, debug and upgrade existing systems.
Solve unique problems that have a broad impact to the company.
Stay in sync with
Stay in sync with project plans and industry standards.
Suggest
Suggest and implement improvements to the development process.
Support
Support and influence the team culture of being customer centric and continuously improving.
Support test infrastructure set up and test tool development.
Support the Infrastructure owned by the SRE team.
Take
Take ownership of the success of the team with a gets things done attitude.
Understand
Understand and lead qualitative research methods.
Undertake
Undertake proof-of-concept work where required.
Update
Update Software Design Documents as required.
Uphold
Uphold high engineering standards and maintain consistency across services.
Use
Use Agile methodologies (SCRUM) to manage application development.
Use or development of Platform as a Service technology and techniques.
Work
Work autonomously to identify and solve challenging technical problems.
Work closely with other specialists to lead multi-week or month-long efforts.
Work cross-functionally to support the successful implementation of all features.
Work effectively with teammates, contributing to an innovative environment of technical excellence.
Work in a product development process that is primarily Agile / Scrum.
Work on multiple layers of our platform including backend and front-end tech.
Work under accelerated deadlines set by the Director of Post-Production.
Work with an Audio Engineer to craft music and sound design for editing deliverables.
Work with engineering management to scope and plan engineering efforts.
Work with FIX protocol and FIX certification process.
Work within a team of other editors and post-production professionals.
Work with infrastructure engineers to strengthen and scale our platform.
Work with multiple client partner teams to implement cohesive end-to-end experiences.
Work with other product teams to create API specifications and contracts for shared data.
Work with product development and quality engineering team members, as well as company leadership.
Work with QE leads on test frameworks and strategy.
Work with quality assurance resources to become proficient at automated testing.
Work with stakeholders from across the organization, from Engineers to Executives.
Work with Systems, Architecture, Hardware, and Quality teams.
Work with the test developers to ensure quality and coverage.
Work with your scrum teams to continuously improve.
Write
Write and maintain high quality unit tests and perform code reviews.
Write code and participate in the product design process.
Write unit and automation tests to ensure a high quality end product.
Write well-structured, reliable, efficient and easily maintainable code.
Most In-demand Hard Skills
The following list describes the most required technical skills of a Principal Software Engineer:
Software Development
Javascript
Design
Linux
Azure
GIT
Jenkins
C
Kafka
Computer Engineering
Architecture
GO
TDD
Data Structures
Scala
Agile
Typescript
Distributed Systems
Software Engineering
Algorithms
Microservices
Most In-demand Soft Skills
The following list describes the most required soft skills of a Principal Software Engineer:
Written and oral communication skills
Problem-solving attitude
Analytical ability
Interpersonal skills
Collaborative
Leadership
Organizational capacity
Team player
Attention to detail
Enthusiastic
Self-motivated
Self-starter
Mentoring
Creative
Proven leadership
Adapt in an ever changing fast paced environment
Adapt the right style and tone to different stakeholders
Passion
Self development time
Critical thinker
