Principal Engineer - Back End

SUMMARY OF RESPONSIBILITIES

The responsibilities for this principal engineer role are critical in leading and shaping the back-end development efforts within an organization. This senior-level role involves technical leadership, system design, code development, team management, collaboration, performance optimization, quality assurance, and continuous improvement. The Principal Engineer establishes coding standards, architects' scalable systems, writes complex code, mentors the team, collaborates with stakeholders, optimizes performance, ensures code quality, and drives process improvements. The role plays a pivotal role in delivering high-quality, efficient, and secure back-end solutions that align with PayNet goals.

Implementing the organization towards a modernized application and architecture running on AWS Cloud. The role is expected to drive internal adoption of in-house development and moving away from vendor outsourcing. 

KEY AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITIES

• Technical Leadership: Provides technical leadership and expertise to the back-end development team. Establish coding standards, architectural guidelines, and best practices to ensure scalable, efficient, and secure back-end systems.

• System Design and Architecture: Collaborate with cross-functional teams, such as front-end engineers and product managers, to design and architect robust and scalable back-end systems. Make strategic decisions on technology stack, database design, and infrastructure to optimize performance and reliability.

• Development and Code Review: Actively participates in back-end development, writing complex code and solving technical challenges. Conduct code reviews to ensure adherence to coding standards, identify potential issues, and promote code quality and maintainability.

• Team Management and Mentorship: Provide mentorship and guidance to the back-end development team, fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth. Lead by example, promote knowledge sharing, and encourage professional development among team members.

• Collaboration and Communication: Collaborates with cross-functional teams and stakeholders to gather requirements, understand business objectives, and align back-end development efforts with organizational goals. Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Performance Optimization and Scalability: Responsible for optimizing back-end performance, ensuring efficient data processing, and scalability. Identify and address bottlenecks, implement caching strategies, and leverage appropriate technologies and techniques to enhance system performance.

• Quality Assurance and Testing: Supports the implementation of robust testing strategies, including unit testing, integration testing, and performance testing. Prioritize code quality, security, and adherence to standards in the back-end development process. Accountable for production issues and serves as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) within an area of specialty, extending advice and consultancy to cross functional teams, being responsible in leading the state-of-the-art application modernization.

• Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement in back-end development processes, tools, and methodologies. Proactively identify opportunities for process optimization, automation, and efficiency gains to enhance productivity and deliver high-quality back-end solutions.

QUALIFICATIONS

Minimum Qualifications

• Education: A bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field is often required.
• Minimum 8 years of relevant work experience, preferably in a high-pressured System Integrator environment – exceptional self-starter will be considered experience in the IT banking and Telecommunications sector would be an added advantage.

Technical Qualifications

• Programming Languages: Proficiency in languages like Java & Go lang. Candidate should have a strong command of these languages and can write clean, readable, maintainable, efficient, and scalable code.

• Web Frameworks: Expertise in popular web frameworks such as Django (Python), Ruby on Rails (Ruby), Spring (Java), or Express.js (Node.js). Implementation experience with SMTP, Tomcat, Apache, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle DB, JBoss, Spring, Grafana, Prometheus, Elastic Search, Logstash, Kibana etc. Leverage these frameworks to develop robust and efficient back-end systems.

• Database Management: Knowledge of database management systems like Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Oracle is important. Have experience in designing and optimizing database schemas, writing efficient queries, and ensuring data integrity. 

• API Development: Proficiency in building APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Understand RESTful principles, design clean and well-documented APIs, and have experience in implementing authentication and authorization mechanisms.

• Cloud Platforms: Familiarity with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. Implementation experience with Cloud offerings from AWS, Azure or GCP such as EC2, ECS, S3, Route53, ELB, Stackdriver, RunScope, PagerDuty, SaaS, PaaS will be an advantage. Leverage these platforms to deploy and scale web applications, utilize managed services, and ensure high availability and performance.

• Version Control Systems: Proficiency in Git or other version control systems is necessary. Have experience with branching strategies, code merging, and working collaboratively with other developers.

• Testing Frameworks: Knowledge of testing frameworks such as JUnit, pytest, or Mocha is important. Prioritize writing unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests to ensure code quality and prevent regressions.

• DevSecOps and CI/CD: Familiarity with DevSecOps practices and tools is beneficial. Have experience in setting up continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to automate build, test, and deployment processes like Gitlab runner, Jenkins and Ansible.

• Security Best Practices: Understanding security principles and implementing best. Knowledgeable about secure coding practices, authentication and authorization mechanisms, and protecting against common security vulnerabilities.

• Performance Optimization: Knowledge of performance optimization techniques. Able to analyze and optimize web application performance, including database queries, caching mechanisms, and server-side optimizations.

• Implementation experience with: Active Directory, SMTP, LDAP, DHCP, HTTPS, DNS, the open-source software ecosystem covering, Terraform, Vagrant, Grafana, Apache, Squid, Tomcat, Nginx, HA-Proxy, Postfix, Oracle Web Logic, Prometheus, Elastic Search, and JBoss among others.