Principal Application Engineer

Overview

At Banner Life Insurance Company, we lead with heart and ambition. Every day, we transform purpose into progress, guided by our unwavering commitment to be better for our customers, clients, and communities, not just today but long-term as well. Our people are the driving force behind everything we achieve. Their passion, purpose, and pursuit of innovation empower us to deliver cutting‑edge solutions that support those we serve, ensuring we are here for you, here for good and striving for better.

We’re a forward‑thinking company energized by our work and how we show up for one another. Our culture is built on meaningful impact and genuine enjoyment, because we believe great work and great experiences should go hand in hand.

By offering career development opportunities, comprehensive benefits, and programs that support your wellbeing, we help you thrive personally and professionally. We are here for you, here for good and here for better.

Banner Life is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help design and build one of the leading digital life insurance platforms in the financial services industry.

The Principal Software Engineer will drive development practices focused on creativity and innovation across our project portfolios. The Principal Software Engineer plays a critical role in driving the technical details for projects, spanning multiple areas and product teams. They need to understand the design, code, and features required by many different business areas and deliver quality solutions to meet those needs. They must be able to design and implement services that are scalable, efficient, available, and low cost to maintain. They will influence other software engineers to come up with the best design and implement common patterns to standardize our code base. They have good partnership and influence skills and can work across multiple teams of varying technical knowledge.

The Principal Software Engineer is the highest level in our Software Engineer series and may be assigned to function in a supervisor capacity as well. The management aspect of the role is not required in order to attain the Principal level, and this will be considered on a case‑by‑case basis relative to the individual’s skillset, career interest, and overall resource planning. If a Principal is assigned management responsibilities this would not exceed 2 direct reports. This responsibility would reduce the technical workload but not eliminate the expectation that they will perform all other technical tasks as defined in the role.

Responsibilities

• Drive multiple projects through to delivery removing obstacles as needed to ensure success.
• Gain a working understanding of Banner Life as a business and collaborate with leaders to contribute to cohesive, end‑to‑end experiences for customers.
• Design and develop web‑based applications and micro‑services using both front‑end and back‑end technologies (full stack development), including but not limited to technical design, coding, and unit testing to generate high quality deliverables to achieve product release objectives.
• Drive improvements to software engineering practices.
• Identify changes needed to improve customer/partner experience through a data driven approach.
• Maintain knowledge and understanding of corporate security procedures and policies for implementation, auditing, and documentation purposes as part of the software implementation process.
• Mentor and train software engineering team members, including both employees and contractors, fostering personal and professional growth.
• Keep up to date with industry trends and apply to projects as appropriate.
• Recommend business solutions by comparing advantages and disadvantages of building solutions ourselves vs low code / no code options available in the market.
• Prepare technical documentation and participate in and perform/lead code reviews to ensure that application code meets internal standards and follows industry best practices.
• Research new technologies and present proposals to management on technologies that would facilitate processing of business or reduce costs to the organization to architects and management.

Qualifications

Education

• BS or MS degree in Computer Science or Engineering OR equivalent years of work experience.

Experience/Knowledge

• 10+ years of software design and development experience with backend services.
• 10+ years hands on experience in any Object‑Oriented coding language. C# preferred.
• 3+ years designing distributed systems.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with excellent interpersonal communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to communicate technical details clearly across organizational boundaries.
• Experience in DevOps to maintain live services and/or application frameworks.
• Cloud and services experience, with Azure cloud experience highly desirable.
• Excellent analytical skills with systematic and structured approach to software design
• Passion for building highly scalable, highly reliable services
• Experience with or exposure to Agile and interactive development processes.
• Clear and experienced understanding of software development life cycle procedures and processes, including agile methodologies.

Interpersonal Skills

• Desire to learn, a tendency to embrace challenges, see failures as essential to mastery, learn from criticism and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
• Help to create a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can bring their full and authentic self, where all voices are heard, and where we do our best work as a result.
• Confident and articulate in expressing ideas to a mixed audience with varying views and challenges.
• A sense of personal ownership and accountability is required, together with the ability to develop and deliver to deadlines while managing internal stakeholder expectations.
• Self‑motivated with a strong drive for reaching across teams and organizations to make progress collaboratively.

Technical Skills

• Expert level knowledge of C#, .NET Core, .NET Frameworks
• Web Services, Micro‑services, SQL, Entity Framework
• HTML, HTML5, CSS, Responsive Design
• Experience with Typescript and Javascript frameworks (JQuery, Angular, etc.)
• Experience with unit testing frameworks (nUnit, MSTest, Jasmine, Karma, etc.)
• Experience with Jira and Confluence
• Experience with version control techniques using Git or BitBucket
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes (or other container methodologies)
• Experience with application deployment in the cloud (Azure, AWS, GCP, etc.)

Preferred Certifications

• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ‑900
• Microsoft Azure Developer Associate AZ‑204

What’s in it for you?

The expected hiring compensation range for this position is $144,800 - $199,100 annually. This is a hybrid opportunity working in Frederick, MD.

The total compensation package for this position may include other elements, such as a sign‑on bonus, long term incentives, and annual bonuses. This role is eligible to participate in the Annual Incentive Plan. The current target payment for the position is 20% of base salary, modified for corporate and individual performance. Bonuses are pro‑rated based on start date. This role has 20 vacation days and 10 sick days that are accrued on a bi‑weekly basis. Employees also have 9 paid holidays throughout the calendar year

We have a competitive compensation and benefits package focused on your overall wellbeing. Employee benefits include health, life, and dental insurance; 401K with company match up to 6% as well as a pension package; generous time off; and wellbeing initiatives throughout the year (we like doing fun stuff). We’re big on professional development and we’ll support and mentor you in your career progression and expect you to help us pay it forward by helping us develop tomorrow’s leaders and growth‑focused professionals. We value our teams and our communities and believe in giving back. Enjoy time off to volunteer for those causes that matter most to you!

If hired, employee will be in an “at‑will position” and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors. The Company reserves the right to change benefits plans at any time.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.