Principal Software Engineer (C#/SQL/Azure)

Description

Position at loanDepot

Position Summary

The Principal Software Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for defining, designing, and delivering enterprise software capabilities across loanDepot’s technology ecosystem. This role operates across teams and systems, solving complex technical and business problems while establishing architecture, engineering standards, and modern software delivery practices. This role will help drive the technology strategy supporting one of the largest mortgage lending platforms in the United States.

loanDepot is evolving from traditional software development toward an AI-enabled and increasingly agentic engineering model. Principal Software Engineers are expected to lead this transformation—demonstrating how AI coding agents and AI-native technologies can materially improve the speed, quality, and economics of software delivery while maintaining the security, reliability, and engineering discipline required of a large enterprise.

Our core technology ecosystem is centered on C#/.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure, and modern web technologies.  Python and other technologies are used where they are the right tools for the problem.

This is not a management role and is not an architecture-only position. Principal Engineers are expected to remain deeply technical and hands-on while multiplying the effectiveness of engineers and teams around them.

Enterprise Software Engineering

• Design and implement enterprise-grade applications, APIs, services, integrations, and platform capabilities.
• Provide deep technical leadership within the C#/.NET and Microsoft ecosystem.
• Guide complex SQL Server architectures, data models, integration patterns, and performance optimization.
• Design resilient distributed systems and integration patterns across cloud and enterprise platforms.
• Guide modernization of legacy applications while balancing business continuity, technical debt, delivery speed, and long-term architecture.
• Define appropriate API, messaging, event-driven, asynchronous processing, and data integration patterns.
• Ensure that applications are designed for production observability, supportability, scalability, and failure recovery.
• Partner with platform, DevOps, security, architecture, data, and application engineering teams.
• Pick up new technologies quickly. Software development is constantly evolving; this role is expected to stay up-to-date.

Agentic Software Engineering

• Perform agentic engineering, using AI assistants and autonomous coding agents to accelerate software delivery.
• Establish effective patterns for engineers to collaborate with AI coding assistants and autonomous or semi-autonomous coding agents throughout the SDLC.
• Design workflows where engineers define problems, architecture, constraints, context, and acceptance criteria while agents increasingly assist with implementation, testing, documentation, modernization, analysis, and repetitive engineering tasks.
• Develop approaches for providing coding agents with application context, architectural guidance, standards, documentation, examples, and validation criteria.
• Define policies and governance for agent autonomy, including when decisions may be delegated to agents and when human engineering oversight is required.
• Establish standards for reviewing AI-generated software for correctness, security, performance, maintainability, observability, and reliability.
• Identify engineering activities that can be automated or delegated to agents and create reusable patterns that scale across teams.
• Mentor engineers in effective AI-assisted and agentic development practices.

Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Provide technical direction and establish engineering standards while partnering with Architecture, Platform, Security, Data, and Engineering leadership on standards and decisions that span enterprise domains.
• Establish architectural patterns, engineering standards, reference implementations, and reusable capabilities that improve consistency and delivery across teams.
• Evaluate tradeoffs across scalability, performance, resiliency, security, maintainability, cost, development velocity, and operational complexity.
• Simplify the technology landscape, eliminate unnecessary complexity, consolidate capabilities, and modernize legacy systems.
• Validate architectural decisions through working software, prototypes, reference implementations, code reviews, and technical investigation.

What Success Looks Like

• Deliver applications, APIs, and integrations to support key business objectives. 
• Improve the technical effectiveness of fellow software engineers through mentoring and leadership.
• Communicate effectively with developers, architects, QA, DevOps, business analysts, and other project stakeholders.

Required Qualifications — Technical Expertise

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant responsibility for complex enterprise systems.
• Expert-level proficiency with C# and .NET and deep understanding of the Microsoft application development ecosystem.
• Advanced Microsoft SQL Server and T-SQL experience including data architecture, query optimization, performance analysis, and large-scale production systems.
• Extensive experience designing APIs, distributed services, and enterprise integration architectures.
• Strong experience designing and operating applications within Microsoft Azure or comparable cloud environments.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, asynchronous processing, messaging, caching, concurrency, resiliency, and failure handling.
• Strong understanding of application security, authentication, authorization, data protection, and secure development practices.
• Expert understanding of software architecture and design patterns, including knowing when established patterns should not be applied.
• Experience with Python, JavaScript, and/or TypeScript preferred.

Required Qualifications — AI & Agentic Engineering

• Demonstrated hands-on experience using AI coding assistants, coding agents, or agentic development platforms to materially improve engineering workflows.
• Experience evaluating AI-generated software for architecture, correctness, security, performance, maintainability, and unintended behavior.
• Understanding of production AI challenges including evaluation, observability, nondeterminism, security, privacy, latency, cost, and failure modes.
• Ability to distinguish valuable AI applications from problems better solved with conventional software engineering.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Information Systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 12+ years of relevant software engineering experience.
• Previous experience operating at Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Architect, or equivalent technical leadership level.
• Experience modernizing large-scale enterprise technology environments.
• Experience within highly regulated industries.
• Mortgage or financial services industry experience preferred but not required.
• Experience implementing AI-enabled applications or leading adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices.

Why Work for #teamloanDepot

• Work with other passionate, purposeful, and customer-centric team members.
• Inclusive, diverse, and collaborative culture where people from all backgrounds can thrive.
• Extensive internal growth and professional development opportunities including tuition reimbursement.
• Comprehensive benefits package including Medical/Dental/Vision.
• Wellness program to support both mental and physical health.
• Generous paid time off options to support work-life balance.

About loanDepot

loanDepot (NYSE: LDI) is a digital commerce company committed to serving its customers throughout the home ownership journey. Since its launch in 2010, loanDepot has revolutionized the mortgage industry with a digital-first approach that makes it easier, faster, and less stressful to purchase or refinance a home. Today, as the nation's second largest non-bank retail mortgage lender, loanDepot enables customers to achieve the American dream of homeownership through a broad suite of lending and real estate services that simplify one of life's most complex transactions. With headquarters in Southern California and offices nationwide, loanDepot is committed to serving the communities in which its team lives and works through a variety of local, regional, and national philanthropic efforts.

Base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay for this role is between $141,000 and $233,000. Your base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors, including your job-related knowledge/skills, qualifications, experience, and market location. 

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.