Principal Engineer II - Digital Banking Platform

Job Title

Principal Engineer II
- Digital Banking Platform

OH
- Columbus

As a Principal Engineer, you will serve as a hands‑on technical leader across the digital account opening and digital banking technology teams, shaping architecture, engineering standards, and delivery for customer‑facing platforms and critical banking journeys. You will design and guide secure, scalable, resilient solutions across web, mobile, API, and integration layers while partnering closely with product, architecture, security, operations, and business stakeholders.

This role requires modern senior‑level software engineering depth, strong digital banking and onboarding domain experience, and the ability to mentor engineers, improve delivery practices, and drive high‑quality outcomes in a regulated financial services environment.

• Lead end‑to‑end technical design and hands‑on delivery of digital account opening and digital banking capabilities, including customer onboarding, authentication, account servicing, transactions, entitlements, and channel integrations.
• Define and evolve scalable application architecture, APIs, event patterns, integration approaches, and engineering standards that support secure, resilient, and high‑performing banking experiences.
• Partner with product managers, business analysts, architects, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and operations teams to translate business objectives and regulatory requirements into actionable technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership across the software development lifecycle, including solution design, estimation, code reviews, testing strategy, CI/CD, release planning, production readiness, and post‑production support.
• Build and review high‑quality, maintainable, secure code and guide engineers on modern design patterns, domain‑driven design, API‑first development, cloud‑native practices, and reusable platform capabilities.
• Drive engineering excellence through automation, observability, performance optimisation, resiliency patterns, secure coding practices, and continuous improvement across development and operational processes.

• 10+ years of related experience.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science is required;
  Masters or MBA in related field preferred.
• Strong understanding of financial services controls, compliance expectations, and operational rigor in areas such as auditability, resiliency, change management, and incident response.
• Previous people leadership, technical mentorship, or domain leadership experience preferred.
• Proven experience leading engineering efforts in digital banking, online/mobile banking, or related financial services platforms.
• Proven experience building or integrating digital account opening, onboarding, identity, authentication, and customer lifecycle capabilities in a regulated environment.
• Strong hands‑on experience with modern software engineering practices, including object‑oriented or JVM‑based development, RESTful APIs, microservices, event‑driven integration, source control, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience designing and delivering secure, scalable, highly available applications with strong observability, operational support, and production reliability practices.
• Strong knowledge of system integration patterns, API design, identity and access concepts, data protection, and secure software development in banking or financial services.
• Experience working in Agile delivery models and leading cross‑functional teams across product, design, QA, operations, security, and architecture.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts, trade‑offs, risks, and solution direction clearly to both engineering teams and senior business stakeholders.
• Preferred programming language/tooling experience: .NET, Java, Azure Dev Ops, Azure Cloud Capabilities, Mulesoft, and Groovy.
• May require up to 25% travel.

Competitive salaries, ownership stake in the company, medical and dental insurance, time off, a great 401k matching program, tuition assistance program, employee volunteer program, and wellness program.

Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western…