Principal Systems Engineer

Job Title

Designs, integrates, and supports highly-distributed, multi-tiered systems and infrastructure to ensure stability, reliability, and resiliency across enterprise environments. Uses cloud, Kubernetes, database, and middle-tier technologies to optimize performance and maintain production integrity. Monitors, assesses, and mitigates the business impact of production incidents while deploying code changes to enable new features and functionalities. Leverages Linux, Oracle databases, Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, networking concepts, and IT Service Management (ITSM)-based methodologies to troubleshoot and resolve issues. Utilizes batch scheduling tools (Autosys/Control-M) and Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processing to manage workflows and ensure completion within defined SLAs. Builds and deploys applications using automated deployment tools and techniques (Jenkins or UDeploy). Applies scripting and automation in Python, Java, and Shell Scripting to streamline processes and reduce operational risk. Supports a portfolio of critical applications running in a globally distributed environment while driving continuous improvement and system optimization.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Provides production support for applications and infrastructure to ensure stability, reliability, and resiliency.
• Analyzes and resolves application, infrastructure, data, and batch issues in partnership with technology teams.
• Supports production and non-production environments for critical business systems.
• Identifies opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce toil, and enhance customer experience.
• Assists with successful rollout of new products by coordinating activities required for launch and ongoing support.
• Advocates for system stability and supportability by collaborating with engineering teams to implement improvements.
• Defines and documents system architecture, requirements, and interfaces in alignment with business needs.
• Confers with systems analysts and developers to design solutions and address performance requirements and limitations.
• Develops and executes system testing and validation procedures, ensuring compliance with standards and best practices.
• Troubleshoots complex system-level issues and drives resolution across hardware, software, and network components.
• Builds and operates, monitors, logs, alerts, and services of distributed systems at scale.

Education and Experience:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Information Systems, Business Administration, Business Analytics, or a closely related field (or foreign education equivalent) and five (5) years of experience as a Principal Systems Engineer (or closely related occupation) maintaining and providing technical support for cloud applications using Linux, Oracle, AWS, and Azure in a financial services or insurance domain.

Or, alternatively, Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Information Systems, Business Administration, Business Analytics, or a closely related field (or foreign education equivalent) and three (3) years of experience as a Principal Systems Engineer (or closely related occupation) maintaining and providing technical support for cloud applications using Linux, Oracle, AWS, and Azure in a financial services or insurance domain.

Skills and Knowledge:

• Demonstrated Expertise ("DE") providing maintenance and production support for Cloud applications and infrastructure using Datadog, Open Telemetry, Autosys, and Jenkins within a financial services environment; identifying root causes for applications and infrastructure hosted on AWS by providing production support for incident management using Datadog, and CloudWatch; and promoting new features and functionalities by supporting the deployment of applications in production and non-production environments.
• DE triaging application or infrastructure issues for large scale enterprise systems by performing log analysis and reviewing application health dashboards and performance monitors to identify the root cause, patterns, and key operational metrics/trends using SQL, and Snowflake; building standard operating procedures (SOPs); and applying and implementing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards for operations, incident, problem, request management, change, and release management using ITSM tools -- ServiceNow or HP Service manager.
• DE providing installation and upgrade support for applications and infrastructure to development teams, using AWS Cloud platform; performing operational tasks in AWS to scale services -- Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and Auto Scaling Groups; and coordinating, monitoring, and supporting the successful completion of batch cycles within the SLA using Autosys.
• DE collecting, developing, and interpreting data models to support the data-driven decisioning-making process, using Python and Cloud; creating automation test suites; troubleshooting application issues using logging tools (Grafana and Datadog); and performing Object-Oriented (OO) design and analysis according to Scrum or Agile methodologies.