Distinguished Software Engineer

Distinguished Software Engineer

Also known as: Principal Engineer · Staff Engineer ·Chief Architect

$260,000 – $300,000 base · 15% annual bonus ·Annual RSU grants

McLean, VA ·5 days/week · 20\+ years required

You’ve spent your career going deep on hard technical problems inside high-stakes software platforms. You can move between whiteboard and code, between engineering teams and executive stakeholders, and between long-term architecture and the work that’s going into the next sprint. You’re not looking for a team to lead. You’re looking for the hardest platform problem in the room.

What this role is

Twenty years in, you know what most engineers don’t: that the hardest part of building software at scale isn’t the code. It’s the decisions that happen before the code, the architecture choices, the tradeoffs, the roadmap calls that either give engineering teams room to move or quietly box them in for years.

Our client is a publicly traded enterprise software company whose platform automates and orchestrates complex business processes, the kind that touch thousands of people, billions of transactions, and can’t afford to fail. Their Foundations engineering group is responsible for everything underneath: performance, reliability, scale, and the technical capabilities that make 1,000x larger and more complex processes possible.

This role sits inside that group. You’ll float across multiple development teams as an architect and senior developer, owning major technical initiatives from concept to delivery. One week you’re clearing architectural runway ahead of a critical feature build. The next you’re presenting a technical roadmap to executive stakeholders and getting buy-in. The week after that you’re deep in code with a team, solving something nobody has solved before.

The mission: prepare the platform for an era of automation where agents may vastly outnumber people. That work is already underway. This role will help lead it.

What you’ll own

• Lead transformational technical initiatives end to end, from identifying the problem to designing the solution to delivering the result, without waiting to be told what the answer is
• Float across multiple engineering teams as the senior technical resource, providing architecture oversight, design review, and hands-on depth wherever it’s needed most
• Spike robust solutions that clear the path for feature development — you run ahead of the teams, not behind them
• Own a functional or operational area within the architecture group, and be accountable for its direction and quality
• Identify technical constraints that slow engineering down and lead the initiatives that fix them
• Translate complex technical designs into clear decisions for executive and product leadership, and translate business priorities back into engineering direction
• Advise product management on technical opportunity and constraint — not just what’s hard, but what’s possible and what it would take
• Conduct and report on design reviews across the organization, and hold the bar on engineering quality
• Mentor engineers at multiple levels and be the kind of engineer others model their work on
• Publish technical documentation and best practices that outlast any single project or team

The technical bar

• Deep fluency in Java and experience across multiple programming paradigms and database technologies
• Firsthand experience building and scaling high-volume, mission-critical production services — not just designing them
• The ability to take an abstract, open-ended business problem and turn it into a concrete, sequenced technical roadmap
• Enough breadth to credibly advise across the full platform stack, and enough depth to go hands-on in any layer of it
• A track record of getting engineering buy-in for large technical changes, not just proposing them
• Comfort presenting technical vision to non-technical executives and making the case for investment

What your background looks like

REQUIRED

• 20\+ years of software development experience, with the majority in a SaaS environment
• Demonstrated experience leading major technical initiatives that required cross-team coordination and executive alignment
• Experience in a high-volume or critical production service environment
• Fluency in Java; depth in at least one additional paradigm or domain (distributed systems, data platforms, workflow engines)
• B.S. in Computer Science or related field; advanced degree preferred

PREFERRED

• Prior functional or operational ownership within an architecture or platform engineering group
• M.S. in Computer Science or related field with 7\+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Experience building or modernizing workflow orchestration, business process management, or data fabric capabilities
• History of publishing engineering documentation, design standards, or internal technical content at scale

Why it’s worth your time

• Platform-scale problems that most engineers never get close to — this is infrastructure for business processes that can’t fail
• A direct line to engineering leadership and real influence over the long-term technical direction of the platform
• Compensation that reflects the level: $260K–$300K base, 15% bonus target, and annual RSU grants vesting over four years
• An engineering organization of 175\+ engineers with the scale to make your work matter and the structure to let you move fast
• Mentorship, leadership development, tuition reimbursement, and a culture that takes technical excellence seriously

The details

BASE SALARY: $260k - $300k\+

LOCATION: McLean, VA

IN-OFFICE: 5 days/week

Benefits

Health coverage and EAP ·Employee Stock Purchase Plan· Tuition reimbursement ·Retirement / pension · Wellness dollars ·Family-forming benefits · Life and disability insurance