Software Engineer Principal; Java Full Stack​/Kafka

Position: Software Engineer Principal (Java Full Stack /Kafka)
** Position Overview*
* At PNC, our people are our greatest differentiator and competitive advantage in the markets we serve. We are all united in delivering the best experience for our customers. We work together each day to foster an inclusive workplace culture where all of our employees feel respected, valued and have an opportunity to contribute to the company's success. As a Software Engineer Principal within PNC's C&IB organization, you will be based in Pittsburgh, PA.

The ideal candidate is a senior, hands on engineer who operates comfortably at an architectural level-designing scalable services, modernizing legacy components, and guiding teams through complex technical decisions-while remaining actively involved in implementation. You will collaborate closely with architects, product owners, and engineering leadership to ensure solutions are robust, secure, and aligned with business needs.

As a Software Engineer Principal, you will play a critical technical leadership role in designing, building, and evolving large scale, business critical platforms. This role is delivery focused and scoped to influencing architecture and technical direction within a defined domain rather than owning enterprise wide strategy. You will mentor engineers, promote engineering best practices, and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and executive audiences.

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Learning Mindset & Adaptability

- Demonstrated curiosity and interest in learning new technologies, frameworks, and problem domains.

- Comfort working across unfamiliar systems or codebases and ramping up quickly through hands on contribution.

- Ability to balance depth in core technologies with a broad working understanding of adjacent platforms and tools.

- Willingness to challenge existing approaches while remaining pragmatic and focused on delivery.

Key Responsibilities

- Serve as a technical authority and hands on contributor for complex, distributed systems supporting Corporate & Institutional Bank and Treasury Management business capabilities.

- Partner with business and technology stakeholders to evaluate options, influence decisions, and achieve consensus on architectural and design approaches.

- Lead architecture and design decisions for microservices  and event driven platforms, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and aligned with enterprise standards.

- Drive end to end technical ownership-from solution design through implementation, deployment, and operational support.

- Strong problem solving skills, including the ability to break down complex problems, evaluate alternatives, and recommend sound solutions.

- Mentor and coach engineers across multiple teams, providing guidance on system design, coding practices, and technical growth.

- Establish and promote engineering best practices around code quality, testing, performance, security, and observability.

- Identify and proactively address technical debt, architectural risks, and performance bottlenecks.

- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and effectively to audiences at all levels of the organization, including senior executives.

- Champion a Dev Sec Ops  mindset, ensuring CI/CD, automation, reliability, and operational readiness are treated as first class concerns.

Required Technical Expertise

- Strong understanding of software architecture principles, including microservices, event driven architectures, and domain driven design concepts.

- Broad foundational knowledge across networking, operating systems, and application security.

- Strong proficiency in Java, with deep hands on experience using Spring Boot, Hibernate, RESTful services, and microservices based architectures.

- Experience designing and developing solutions using:

o Core Java

o SQL (MySQL or equivalent relational databases)

o Messaging and streaming platforms such as Active

MQ and Kafka

- Hands on experience with authentication and authorization mechanisms, API frameworks (REST; Graph

QL a plus), and persistence layers.

- Proven experience in database design, optimization, and data modeling across both relational and No

SQL data stores.

Preferred / Desired Skills

- Interest in and exposure to a broad range of modern technologies, such as:

o Agentic or applied AI use cases

o Microsoft 365 Copilot and productivity focused AI tools

o Open Shift and Kubernetes

o Cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS

- Knowledge of performance tuning, application security, and scalability best practices.

- Experience with Dev Ops and cloud native practices, including:

o CI/CD pipelines

o Containerization and orchestration (Open Shift, Kubernetes)

- Hands on experience with CI/CD tooling such as Bitbucket, Jenkins, or similar platforms.

PNC is an in-office company that fosters a supportive culture where employees can thrive and achieve balance. We encourage candidates to connect with their recruiter and hiring manager to understand workplace expectations and ensure the role aligns with their…