Principal Developer - Albuquerque, NM; Hybrid

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7 days ago Requisition

Salary Range: $ To $ Annually

The Principal Developer is a senior practitioner leader who operates at the intersection of hands‑on engineering execution, software architecture, client‑facing solutioning, and cross‑functional program leadership. This role is designed for an engineer who can walk into any project environment, immediately understand what needs to be built and why, sequence the work, align the teams, and deliver. This is a hybrid position based out of our Albuquerque office.

At the Principal level, this person drives application and platform engineering strategy for the organization, not just a single project. They set engineering standards, evaluate frameworks, languages, and architectural trade‑offs, lead reference architecture decisions across engagements, and are the person RS21 turns to when a technical decision is hard. They translate ambiguous client requirements into scalable, maintainable software systems, own the full software development lifecycle from design through deployment and operations, and bridge the communication gap between business stakeholders, product teams, platform engineers, and data teams with equal fluency.

This role further serves as an embedded technical program lead, with the discipline to decompose ambiguous initiatives into structured, sequenced delivery work, the systems thinking to connect every technical task to its business outcome, and the ownership to keep multi-workstream programs on track independently.

As a people manager, the Principal Developer holds direct line management responsibility for a team of software developers. They own hiring, performance management, career development, and day-to‑day people leadership for their team, ensuring engineers are growing technically while also being effectively staffed and supported across client engagements.

Critically, the Principal Developer is a force multiplier. They raise the capabilities of those around them, train and coach junior and mid‑level staff, establish the patterns and practices RS21's software engineering function grows from, and actively contribute to RS21's business development and proposal efforts as a credible technical voice.

• Serve as the direct line manager for a team of software developers, designers and Dev Ops engineers owning staffing, workload balance, and day-to-day people leadership.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, set goals, and deliver formal performance reviews and feedback that support each team member's growth and accountability.
• Own hiring decisions for the team, including interviewing, candidate evaluation, and onboarding planning for new software developers.
• Identify and address performance issues proactively and fairly, partnering with HR and technical leadership as needed.
• Build individual development plans that align team members' career goals with RS21's technical roadmap and project needs.

• Drive RS21's application architecture strategy, evaluate frameworks, languages, and design patterns across engagements and make organization-wide recommendations.
• Design, build, and maintain production-grade, scalable applications and services, including APIs, backend systems, and front-end interfaces.
• Architect software systems with maintainability, testability, security, and performance built in from day one.
• Establish coding standards, architectural patterns, and engineering norms that apply across RS21's project portfolio.
• Ensure software reliability, performance, and scalability across applications, and hold teams accountable to those standards.

• Evaluate and select foundation model and tooling strategies for RS21's AI and LLM-powered offerings; guide ethical AI approach across engagements.
• Design and implement application features that integrate LLM and AI capabilities, including:
• Conversational interfaces and agentic workflows
• Prompt…