Principal Engineer

Staff Software Engineer (Java/Spring Boot) – Learning Experience & Platform Engineering

Location: Remote

Experience: 6+ Years

Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

We are looking for a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to join our engineering team and help design, build, and scale enterprise-grade applications and platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who combines strong software engineering expertise with system design capabilities, architectural thinking, and the ability to mentor and lead development teams.

The ideal candidate has extensive experience building large-scale applications using Java, Spring Boot, and the Spring ecosystem, designing secure and scalable REST APIs, driving engineering best practices, and delivering high-quality software solutions. Experience leveraging modern AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity is a strong advantage.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

Lead the design and development of scalable, secure, and high-performance enterprise applications.

Drive architectural decisions and establish engineering standards across projects.

Mentor software engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance.

Collaborate with Product Managers, Architects, DevOps Engineers, and stakeholders to deliver business-critical solutions.

Promote engineering excellence, code quality, and best practices.

System Design & Architecture

Design distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native applications.

Create high-level and low-level architecture designs.

Define API contracts and integration strategies.

Optimize applications for scalability, reliability, maintainability, and performance.

Conduct architecture reviews and technical risk assessments.

Software Development

Develop enterprise applications using Java and Spring technologies.

Build and maintain RESTful APIs and backend services.

Implement secure authentication and authorization mechanisms.

Design and optimize database schemas and data access layers.

Troubleshoot production issues and drive root cause analysis.

Team Leadership

Lead small to medium-sized engineering teams.

Break down complex initiatives into actionable deliverables.

Support hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and technical growth of engineers.

Foster a collaborative and high-performance engineering culture.

Innovation & AI Adoption

Evaluate and adopt AI-powered development tools and workflows.

Improve engineering productivity through automation, code generation, testing assistance, and intelligent development practices.

Stay current with emerging technologies and industry best practices.

Skills & Qualifications:

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

5+ years of professional software development experience.

Proven experience leading technical teams and delivering enterprise-scale applications.

Strong expertise in Java and object-oriented design principles.

Deep understanding of software architecture and system design.

Experience designing and implementing scalable REST APIs.

Strong problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills.

Technical Skills

Core Java

Java 17+

Collections Framework

Multithreading & Concurrency

JVM Internals

Performance Tuning

Design Patterns

Spring Ecosystem

Strong hands-on experience with:

Spring Boot

Spring Framework

Spring MVC

Spring Data JPA

Spring Security

Spring Cloud

Spring WebFlux (preferred)

Spring Batch

Spring Integration

Spring Actuator

Spring Validation

Spring Cache

API Development

RESTful API Design

OpenAPI / Swagger

API Security

OAuth2

JWT

API Gateway Integration

Databases

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Query Optimization

Database Design

Microservices & Distributed Systems

Event-Driven Architecture

Service Discovery

Circuit Breakers

Distributed Transactions

Messaging Systems

Testing:

JUnit

Mockito

Integration Testing

Contract Testing

Performance Testing

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building SaaS or enterprise platforms.

Experience with Learning Management Systems (LMS), EdTech, FinTech, Healthcare, or large-scale B2B applications.

Exposure to Domain-Driven Design (DDD).

Experience with observability and monitoring tools.

Knowledge of security best practices and compliance requirements.

Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments.

AI Experience (Preferred):

Practical use of AI coding assistants such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, or similar tools.

Experience using AI for:

Code generation and refactoring

Test automation

Documentation generation

System design assistance

Engineering productivity improvements

Emeritus provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.