Principal Software Engineer

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to lead the modernisation of our COBOL development ecosystem and Enterprise Server application replatforming products. The role is hands‑on, strategic, and involves designing, building, and evolving mission‑critical infrastructure used by global enterprises.

• Architect, design, and implement core components within our COBOL development tools, runtime environments, and mainframe replatforming infrastructure.
• Provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams building compilers, runtimes, middleware, and large‑scale distributed systems.
• Drive modernization strategies for legacy application ecosystems, including cloud migration, workload transformation, and hybrid deployment scenarios.
• Own complex technical domains end‑to‑end from design through production, balancing long‑term architecture with immediate product needs.
• Build highly reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure software used in mission‑critical enterprise environments.
• Conduct deep code reviews, troubleshoot production issues, and mentor engineers in system‑level design and performance optimisation.
• Collaborate with product management to shape roadmap priorities and translate customer challenges into technical solutions.
• Work with System Test, Dev Ops, and release engineering to ensure high‑quality, low‑risk releases across a diverse product portfolio.
• Introduce and champion engineering excellence practices, including automated testing, performance benchmarking, observability, and maintainability.

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leadership over complex, multi‑team technical initiatives.
• Deep expertise in systems‑level software development (compilers, runtimes, operating systems, or infrastructure‑level platforms).
• Strong background in mission‑critical, high‑availability software (e.g., financial services, telecom, government, or core enterprise platforms).
• Proven experience with COBOL, PL/I, C, or C++ (or willingness to dive into COBOL internals).
• Track record building or modernising enterprise‑grade tooling, middleware, or distributed systems.
• Ability to decompose legacy architectures, assess modernization paths, and design scalable solutions.
• Preferred: experience with mainframe‑to‑cloud migration, workload replatforming, or runtime compatibility layers.
• Familiarity with Azure, AWS, or hybrid cloud architectures.
• Understanding of static and dynamic language runtimes, compiler pipelines, and virtual machine internals.
• Prior technical mentorship or architectural leadership across multiple scrum teams.
• Strong diagnostic skills for debugging low‑level performance, memory, concurrency, or runtime issues.

Impact large‑scale product design across multiple major portfolios, influence the future of mission‑critical modernization technologies, and work with a highly experienced engineering organisation.

Rocket Software Inc. is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age or veteran status. Rocket is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

The company provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with physical or mental disabilities.