Principal Software Engineer (Java Full Stack)

About ACI Worldwide

Job summary

Key responsibilities

• Define architecture, technical strategy, and engineering standards for mission-critical applications.
• Lead scalable, secure, and high-performance Java enterprise solution development.
• Drive cloud-native and microservices modernization initiatives.
• Provide technical leadership across multiple teams and handle complex architectural escalations.
• Align technology investments with business objectives through stakeholder partnership.
• Mentor senior engineers and promote engineering excellence and innovation.

Required qualifications

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field is required.
• At least 10 years of software engineering experience with proven technical leadership is required.
• Extensive large-scale enterprise application design and delivery experience is required.
• Strong architecture and development leadership across multiple teams is required.

Technical expertise

• Expert Java, J2EE/Jakarta EE, Spring, Spring Boot, and Hibernate/JPA experience is required.
• Deep microservices, REST, event-driven systems, and distributed computing expertise is required.
• Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes or OpenShift, CI/CD, Kafka, messaging, API gateway, and high-volume transaction experience is required.
• Angular UI development experience is required.
• Application security, scalability, performance optimization, and reliability engineering knowledge is required.

AI and emerging technologies

• Experience evaluating and integrating AI/ML capabilities into enterprise applications is required.
• Knowledge of generative AI, LLMs, RAG, AI agents, and prompt engineering is required.
• Experience with AI-powered APIs and services and AI-assisted development tools is required.
• Experience establishing governance, security, privacy, and responsible AI practices is required.
• The role identifies AI use cases and drives AI-related technical strategy and architecture.

Preferred qualifications

• Payment processing, financial technology, financial services, or regulated-industry experience is preferred.
• Cloud certifications and enterprise architecture experience are preferred.
• Large-scale modernization, thought leadership, publications, patents, or conference speaking experience are preferred.

Professional skills

• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills are required.
• Architectural thinking, business-outcome focus, influence without direct authority, and mentoring are important.

Core capabilities