Principal Software Engineer

HHAeXchange is the leading technology platform for home and community-based care. Founded in 2008, HHAeXchange was created to build a complete, end-to-end homecare solution that helps people who are aging or have disabilities live well in their homes and communities. Our employees work to transform healthcare by building one homecare platform that connects patients, personal care providers, managed care organizations, and states.


The Principal Software Engineer is a senior, hands-on technical leader who sets technical direction for one or more engineering teams. This role does not manage people. It leads through technical expertise, clear written decisions, and working directly with engineers.


The role guides the design of API-first software and healthcare data exchange solutions that run on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Principal Software Engineer is accountable for the technical quality of the software its teams produce: performance, reliability, scalability, security, and accessibility. Our engineering organization includes employees and contract engineers, so this role also defines and maintains clear standards, templates, and review practices that help every engineer deliver consistent work.


To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential job duty satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.


This position is open for candidates who are located within the EST or CST time zones within the US only.

Essential Job Duties

• Technical direction: Set the technical direction for the systems that one or more teams own. Record major decisions, the options considered, and the reason for each choice in Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• Hands-on delivery: Write, review, and ship production code on a regular basis. Focus on work that carries high risk or that sets a pattern other engineers will follow.
• Incremental modernization: Guide the gradual modernization of legacy applications into modern services. Replace one part at a time while the old and new parts run together (the strangler pattern), so that feature delivery continues. Define the order of work, the rollback plan for each step, and the measures that show progress.
• Healthcare interoperability: Design and review solutions that exchange healthcare data using HL7, FHIR, and X12 EDI. Account for differences between trading partners, version changes, error handling, and reconciliation of data between systems.
• Quality attributes: Own the system-wide qualities of performance, reliability, availability, scalability, security, and accessibility. Define measurable targets, such as service level objectives (SLOs), and review results with the teams.
• Security and protected health information (PHI): Make sure designs protect PHI and follow HIPAA requirements. Apply least-privilege access, audit logging, encryption, and secure coding practices based on OWASP guidance.
• Standards and guardrails: Define and maintain coding standards, design review practices, project templates, and automated checks. Make them easy to find and easy to follow, so that quality holds regardless of team size or turnover.
• AI-assisted development: Set practical guidance for the responsible use of AI coding tools. Include how AI-generated code is reviewed and tested, and which data may never be entered into these tools, such as PHI.
• Mentorship: Coach engineers at all levels. Give specific written feedback in design reviews and code reviews, and explain the reasons behind recommendations.
• Cross-functional partnership: Work with Product Management, Product Owners, Quality Assurance, and Architecture to define scope, assess feasibility, and turn business needs into technical plans.
• Risk management: Identify technical risks early. State each risk plainly, describe the options, and track the chosen mitigation until it is complete.
• Communication with leaders: Act as a primary technical contact for executives and business partners. Explain technical trade-offs in plain language to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Evaluating new technology: Evaluate new tools and methods against clear criteria, such as pilot scope, success measures, and who will support the technology in production, before recommending adoption.

Other Job Duties

• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor or an HHAeXchange leader.

Travel Requirements

• Travel up to 10%, including overnight travel

Required Education, Experience, Certification, and Skills

• Education: B.S. or M.S. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent significant industry experience.
• Software engineering experience: 8 or more years of professional software engineering experience in a software product company, building scalable, high-performance systems.
• Healthcare experience: 5 or more years of experience building healthcare software, including handling of PHI under HIPAA.
• Healthcare interoperability: Hands-on experience with HL7 and FHIR in production systems.
• Programming languages: Strong production experience with C# and the .NET platform. Working knowledge of at least one other language, such as Python or Java.
• Cloud architecture: Experience designing, building, and operating software as a service (SaaS) on AWS or a similar cloud, using microservices, containers (such as Docker and Kubernetes), and serverless services.
• Databases: Solid understanding of relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases, including diagnosing performance problems.
• Security: Experience building applications that meet HIPAA requirements, with knowledge of identity and access management, encryption, audit logging, and OWASP secure coding practices.
• Technical leadership: Record of leading technical work across more than one team without formal authority, and of mentoring engineers.
• Delivery practices: Experience with Agile methods, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and DevOps practices.
• Problem solving: Strong analytical skills and a record of delivering practical solutions.
• Communication: Clear written and spoken communication, including the ability to explain complex technical topics to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• X12 EDI: Experience with X12 EDI transactions such as eligibility, claims (837), and remittance (835).
• Legacy modernization: Experience modernizing a legacy enterprise web application into modern services without a full rewrite.
• Front-end development: Experience with TypeScript and Angular, or a similar framework, at enterprise scale.
• Event-driven systems: Experience operating systems that communicate through messages or events, including change data capture (CDC).
• Accessibility: Experience delivering software that meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in an enterprise application.
• AI coding tools: Practical experience using AI coding tools, and the ability to describe the guardrails you use.
• Home care domain: Knowledge of Medicaid, home and community-based services, or electronic visit verification (EVV).

The base salary range for this US-based, full-time, and exempt position is $165,000-180,000/yr, not including variable compensation. An employee's exact starting salary will be based on various factors including but not limited to experience, education, training, merit, location, and the ability to exemplify the HHAeXchange core values.

This is a benefits-eligible position. HHAeXchange offers competitive health plans, paid time-off, company paid holidays, 401K retirement program with a Company elected match, including other company sponsored programs.

HHAeXchange is an equal-opportunity employer. The Company offers employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, marital status, veteran status, citizenship, genetic information, hairstyles, or any other status protected by local or federal law.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.