Principal Software Engineer

Principal Engineer Payments

As a Principal Engineer on the Payments Technology and Engineering team youll set technical direction and design best-in-class solutions and do hands-on engineering for products that process millions of B2B payments. The role blends hands-on software development architecture coaching and cross-functional partnership with Product Architecture Database DevOps Performance Engineering and Operations this is not a purely advisory position. Youll bring an AI-first mindset to everything from daily coding to system design treating agentic AI tooling as a default part of the SDLC rather than an occasional aid. This is a senior individual-contributor role youll drive impact through system design architecture mentorship and cross-team influence.

What Youll Do:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define and drive the Payments platforms technical approach system design decisions and engineering best practices.

• Advance platform scalability reliability and observability through API-first and event-driven design distributed systems cloud-native architecture and fault-tolerant patterns (e.g. circuit breakers retries with backoff etc.).

• Partner with Solution and Enterprise Architects and with developers to determine optimal designs for architecture efficiency maintainability and scalability across new and existing capabilities.

• Collaborate with Product Business Operations and Engineering leaders to align technical solutions with business needs and shape engineering roadmaps.

AI-First Engineering

• Adopt an agentic AI-based SDLC as the default approach to building software using AI coding agents to scaffold implement test and review code not just as an occasional assist.

• Work fluently with AI harness / coding-agent tools (e.g. Cursor Claude Code VS Code with GitHub Copilot) as part of your daily workflow and help establish team-wide standards and best practices for their use.

• Champion AI-driven engineering practices intelligent automation predictive analytics and self-healing systems to improve development efficiency and system resilience.

• Identify and implement AI-based solutions for Payments product initiatives from proof of concept through production.

• Model and promote an AI-first mindset across the team evaluating new AI tooling sharing what works and pushing the team toward higher leverage.

Quality Security & Delivery

• Solve problems debug and optimize code for performance and security with attention to the compliance and regulatory standards that apply to payment processing (e.g. PCI-DSS).

• Own code quality and unit test coverage; partner with QA to design and review test cases so the platform meets customer expectations.

• Perform code reviews and approve pull requests ensuring code follows documented standards and best practices.

• Own the health of the software delivery pipeline and guide the team in improving it.

Hands-On Development Mentorship & Collaboration

• Stay hands-on writing code building proofs of concept and pairing directly with engineers while also setting architectural direction; this role is a blend of building and leading not one or the other.

• Mentor and coach developers with particular focus on senior engineers through code review design discussions and technical guidance.

• Partner closely with Product and Operations to ensure technical solutions align with business needs and day-to-day operational realities.

• Influence engineering culture and product solutions within the team and company-wide through thought leadership.

• Drive full lifecycle application development: research technical options for new features provide guidance based on findings and build proofs of concept to validate the best approach.

What Were Looking For:

Required

• Demonstrated agentic AI-first approach to the SDLC with hands-on fluency in AI coding-agent tools such as Cursor Claude Code or VS Code with GitHub Copilot.

• Knowledge and experience in AI agent development using tools and frameworks such as LangChain/LangGraph Databricks vector databases and open- and closed-weight LLMs.

• Broad AI-first mindset comfortable evaluating and adopting new AI tooling and practices and coaching other engineers to do the same.

• Bachelors or masters degree in computer science Computer Engineering or a related field or equivalent practical experience plus 10 years software development experience building web-based applications.

• Strong knowledge of the Microsoft development stack: .NET Core C# JavaScript RESTful services ORM T-SQL JSON MVC XML HTML and CSS.

• Strong design and architecture mindset with experience designing scalable high-performance secure enterprise applications in Azure (or another public cloud).

• Proficiency in modern engineering practices: unit testing CI/CD pipelines DevOps microservices and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).

• Deep knowledge of sound coding practices unit testing object-oriented design and design patterns.

• Comprehensive knowledge of databases (RDBMS and NoSQL) and advanced SQL including stored procedures indexes functions and triggers.

• Experience with event-driven and messaging architectures (e.g. Kafka Azure Service Bus or Event Grid).

• Thorough knowledge of source control (Git) in continuous integration environments.

• Hands-on experience with Agile processes (Scrum/Kanban).

• Experience with observability/monitoring tooling (e.g. Datadog Application Insights OpenTelemetry).

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with a demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and communicate with non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred

• Experience in payments fintech or financial services including familiarity with compliance frameworks such as PCI-DSS.

• Prior experience mentoring senior engineers or acting as a technical lead without formal management authority.

About AvidXchange

AvidXchange is a leading provider of accounts payable (AP) automation software and payment solutions for middle-market businesses and their suppliers. By trade we are a technology company but if you ask anyone who works here theyll tell you our people are at the core of who we are. At AvidXchange mindset is everything . We are Connected as People Growth Minded and Customer Obsessed . Thesethree mindsets represent our culture who weare who weve always been and they guide usto improve every our founding in 2000 in Charlotte NC weve created a company of over 1500 teammates working across the U.S. or remotely. AvidXchange is proud to be Certified as a Great Place to Work. The prestigious recognition is based on anonymous data from our teammates and makes official what our teammates have known for years that AvidXchange is a Great Place to Work.

Who you are:

• A go-getter with an entrepreneurial mindset that meansyou arenot afraid of taking riskswinning bigorfacing the unknown.
• Someone who understands that business ispeople centric. Connecting with others as humans first allows you to develop mutually beneficial working relationships.
• Focused onmaking a difference for our customers. AvidXchange exists to help solve complex problems for our customers so we can all realize our potential.

What youll get:

AvidXchange teammates (we call them AvidXers) get the perks and prestige of a growing tech company paired with the flexibility of a founder-led startup. We help our AvidXers develop as professionals and as human beings providing work/life balance development programs and competitive benefits. At AvidXchange we are building more than a tech company we are building an experience. We remain committed to a culture where you can fully be you connected with others chasing big goals and making a meaningful impact. If you want to help us grow while realizing your potential and creating stories youll tell for years youve come to the right place.

AvidXers enjoy:

• 18 days PTO*
• 11 Holidays (8companyrecognized & 3floatingholidays)
• 16 hours per year ofpaid Volunteer Time Off (VTO)
• Competitive Healthcare
• High Deductible Heath Plan Option that has $0 monthly premium for teammate-only coverage
• 100% AvidXchange paid Dental Base Plan Coverage
• 100% AvidXchange paid Life Insurance
• 100% AvidXchange paid Long-Term Disability
• 100% AvidXchange paid Short-Term Disability
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) - Providescounseling services legal and financial consultations and health advocacy for Teammates and their eligible dependents
• Onsite Health Clinic with Atrium Health - available to Teammates and their eligible dependents
• 401(k) Match: 100% match on the first 3% of your salary plus 50% match on the next 2%
• Parental Leave: 8 weeks 100% paid by AvidXchange**
• Discounts on Pet Home and Auto insurance
• WeeCareChildcare Service:helps teammates find affordable daycarechildcareandtutors 40%less expensivethan traditional daycarecenters
• Perks at Work:free discount program that provides teammates the opportunity to save on items fromelectronics movie tickets car buying vacationsandmore
• Onsite gym fitness center yoga studio and basketball court
• Tuition Reimbursement up to the federal maximum of $5250***
• Hybrid Workplace Flexibility
• Free parking

*Fully granted from beginning of year pro-rated if hired mid-year

**Must be full-time for at least 3 months

***Must be full-time for at least one year

Equal Employment Opportunity

AvidXchange is an equal opportunity employer. AvidXchange is committed to equal employment opportunity in accordance with applicable federal state and local laws. AvidXchange will not discriminate against applicants for employment on any legally recognized basis. This includes but is not limited to veteran status race color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity gender expression national origin age and physical or mental disability.

Required Experience:

Staff IC