Principal Software Development Engineer

Principal Software Development Engineer

We're building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you'll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Our Consumer Experience and Analytics organization, within CVS Health's Data, Digital, Analytics, and Technology (DDAT) organization, is seeking a hands-on, passionate, and people-focused Principal Software Development Engineer to join our high-energy, growing team. In this role, you will help make a meaningful difference in the lives of our consumers by driving AI-powered innovation that transforms how members access health information and receive personalized support throughout their healthcare journey. As part of CVS Health's mission to transform health and wellness through engaging, best-in-class digital experiences, you will play a key role in building an integrated platform that powers innovative products, enhances consumer engagement, and helps revolutionize the future of health and wellness.

In this role, you will help shape the future of healthcare technology by building innovative applications and products at the forefront of cloud, data, and AI-driven solutions. Leveraging your deep technical expertise, you will join a high-performing architecture team responsible for developing a cloud-native platform designed to transform healthcare experiences and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of consumers.

As a Principal Software Development Engineer, you will operate within a large-scale product, engineering, and architecture ecosystem, leading strategic technical initiatives across one or more value streams, Agile Release Trains (ARTs), or enterprise platforms. Success in this role requires exceptional partnership skills, broad technical depth, strong communication abilities, and a strategic mindset capable of bridging business objectives with technology solutions.

Key Qualifications

• Proven leader with the demonstrated ability to create technical solutions in large organizations with complex business requirements and constraints.
• Ability to work with multiple stakeholders, including Business, Product, Engineering and Platform teams, influencing application design, data flows, and extensible platform architectures.
• Takes a disciplined approach to software development and problem-solving, with a proven ability to decompose complex challenges into actionable plans within an Agile environment.
• Exceptional systems thinker who can seamlessly navigate between high-level architectural strategy and detailed technical implementation.
• Experience designing and implementing modern software architectures, including microservices and micro-frontend patterns, while driving large-scale solutions across multiple applications and teams.
• Broad technical expertise spanning cloud platforms, enterprise applications, microservices, APIs, data analytics, networking, and large-scale systems.
• Good understanding of ADA and other regulatory compliances including PCI, PII, and PHI.
• Excellent collaboration, influencing, negotiation, coaching, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build strong coalitions across teams and organizations.
• Outstanding communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to effectively evangelize technical vision and drive alignment among diverse stakeholders.
• Passionate about technology, innovation, and continuous learning, with a high degree of technical curiosity and aptitude.

Responsibilities Include

• Working closely with Product Managers/Owners, Application Architects and Engineering Leads to provide guidance on implementation of reference architecture solutions that demonstrate best in class user experiences.
• Evaluating emerging technologies, leading proof-of-concept (POC) initiatives, and developing architectural recommendations that validate technical approaches and accelerate innovation.
• Developing solutions that are well engineered, flexible, resilient, operable, maintainable, and can be delivered on schedule, while ensuring a balance between tactical and strategic technology solutions.
• Author white papers, guides, how-to's, and other technical documentation that clearly explains architectural guidelines, vision, technical direction, and serves as a reference for the internal developer community.
• Excellent collaboration, influencing, evangelization, negotiation, coaching, mentoring, and coalition-building skills, with the ability to work with across all levels (e.g. jr. to VP) and job functions (e.g. product, platform, developers, DevOps).
• Champion a user-centric approach to product development, ensuring accessibility, privacy, and security are embedded into every solution. Ensure the secure handling of PII and PHI data and that architectural designs address potential security threats and vulnerabilities.
• Provide Subject Matter Expert (SME) oversight and development support on future application updates and maintenance.
• Mentor and coach architects and engineers, fostering technical excellence, continuous learning, and a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
• Define and validate Non-Functional Requirements, including performance, scalability, availability, resiliency, disaster recovery, security, and observability, ensuring solutions meet enterprise standards.
• Analyze current architecture and develop opportunities for improvements in alignment with industry best practices.
• Work with internal and external stakeholders to arrive at optimal business and technology solutions.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of Software Industry experience.
• 7+ years of experience leading enterprise-scale solution design and technical architecture initiatives across multiple value streams.
• 7+ years' hands-on experience with modern technologies and frameworks, including Java, Python, Node.js, Angular, and ReactJS.
• 7+ years of experience with relational and NoSQL databases, including data modeling, normalization/denormalization, sharding, and other scalable data architecture patterns.
• 7+ years of experience designing cloud-native, microservices-based solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• 5+ years of experience designing modern APIs and RESTful services that enhance user experience and simplify systems integration.
• 5+ years of experience with micro-services architecture and designing RESTful APIs that facilitate a superior UX or simplify systems integration.
• 5+ years' experience designing and developing complex systems employing a disciplined and rigorous approach.
• 5+ years' experience with requirements analysis, estimation, systems, and application design, and testing.
• 5+ years of demonstrated communication and presentation skills, with the ability to effectively influence and communicate technical concepts to teams, clients, and executive leadership.
• 4+ years of experience managing technical, customer-facing applications and services.
• Proven ability to be self-directed, manage multiple competing priorities and deliver results with minimal supervision.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building, scaling and operating large scale distributed systems.
• Ability to learn quickly, adapt to evolving business and technical requirements, and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience working in Agile environments, including SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) practices and methodologies.
• Knowledge of security-focused architecture, engineering, or application development initiatives.
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and modern software delivery methodologies.
• Health care industry experience.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a closely related discipline, or an equivalent combination of formal education and experience.
• Master's degree is a plus

The typical pay range for this role is:

$144,200.00 - $288,400.00

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company's equity award program.

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families. This full‑time position is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial well‑being of colleagues and their families. The benefits for this position include medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and other resources, based on eligibility.

Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process.