Principal Engineer at Smith Hanley Associates

Title: Principal Engineer

Location: Washington, DC

Salary: $160,000 - 180,000

Contact: Paul Chatlos, pchatlos@smithhanley.com

Principal Engineer Job Summary:

The Principal Engineer is a senior technical hands-on leader responsible for driving the engineering vision and strategy within the organization. As a highly skilled problem solver and technical expert, the Principal Engineer provides guidance across the engineering and data science teams, maintains and improves custom tools, and ensures that projects align with the company’s strategic goals. You will be an advocate for innovation and collaborate closely with company leadership to maintain a technology roadmap and deliver solutions for internal and external customers.

Principal Engineer Key Responsibilities:

1.Technical Leadership:

-Lead the design and architecture of complex, high-impact systems and applications.

-Manage the designing, building, and maintaining of infrastructure in AWS

-Implement and manage CI/CD pipelines to streamline development processes and improve deployment frequency.

-Identify automation opportunities to reduce manual tasks and optimize workflows.

-Establish and maintain engineering best practices and standards across the organization.

2.Architecture and Design:

-Develop architectural frameworks and design principles that enable scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

-Ensure compliance with architecture and security guidelines.

-Drive the adoption of new technologies, tools, and methodologies that align with business objectives.

3.Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement:

-Collaborate with the data science team to ensure that engineering efforts are aligned with data science goals.

-Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to non-technical stakeholders and executives.

4.Mentorship and Development:

-Act as an advisor to engineers and data scientists, providing guidance on technical challenges, career growth, and skill development.

-Lead by example, promoting a culture of continuous learning, code quality, and accountability.

-Facilitate technical workshops, knowledge-sharing sessions, and peer reviews.

5.Innovation and Strategy:

-Identify emerging trends and technologies that could provide a competitive advantage to the organization.

-Drive long-term technical strategy in line with the company's objectives, exploring innovative approaches to meet market demands.

-Evaluate and propose solutions for optimizing performance, scalability, and reliability across systems.

6.Security and Compliance:

-Ensure security best practices are followed, including managing access controls, secrets, and credentials.

-Work with compliance teams to ensure systems adhere to industry standards and regulatory requirements.

-Conduct periodic security assessments and implement recommendations.

7.Quality Assurance and Performance Optimization:

-Define and enforce quality standards, monitoring key metrics to ensure system performance and reliability.

-Conduct architectural reviews and postmortems to identify improvement opportunities and prevent future issues.

-Lead efforts to improve security, compliance, and overall resilience of systems.

Principal Engineer Qualifications:

-Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

-Experience: 10+ years in software engineering, with significant experience in technical leadership or architect roles.

Principal Engineer Skills:

1.Technical Skills:

-Extensive experience in system design, architecture, and high-scale applications.

Proficiency in multiple programming languages and modern development frameworks (e.g. Python).

-Strong understanding of cloud platforms, distributed systems, and microservices architecture.

-Experience leading teams using DevOps and CI/CD

-Familiarity with AI, machine learning, and data engineering

-Experience with databases (SQL and NoSQL), data processing, and caching solutions.

2.Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills:

-Ability to identify complex issues, assess root causes, and implement effective solutions.

-Strong aptitude for understanding and analyzing large systems and improving performance, security, and scalability.

3.Soft Skills:

-Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

-Strong organizational skills, with a detail-oriented approach.

-Ability to influence without authority and work cross-functionally.