Software Engineer Principal (Java Full Stack /Kafka)

Position Overview

At PNC, our people are our greatest differentiator and competitive advantage in the markets we serve. We are all united in delivering the best experience for our customers. We work together each day to foster an inclusive workplace culture where all of our employees feel respected, valued and have an opportunity to contribute to the company's success. As a Software Engineer Principal within PNC's C&IB organization, you will be based in Pittsburgh, PA.

The ideal candidate is a senior, hands on engineer who operates comfortably at an architectural level-designing scalable services, modernizing legacy components, and guiding teams through complex technical decisions-while remaining actively involved in implementation. You will collaborate closely with architects, product owners, and engineering leadership to ensure solutions are robust, secure, and aligned with business needs.

As a Software Engineer Principal, you will play a critical technical leadership role in designing, building, and evolving large scale, business critical platforms. This role is delivery focused and scoped to influencing architecture and technical direction within a defined domain rather than owning enterprise wide strategy. You will mentor engineers, promote engineering best practices, and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and executive audiences.

Learning Mindset & Adaptability
• Demonstrated curiosity and interest in learning new technologies, frameworks, and problem domains.
• Comfort working across unfamiliar systems or codebases and ramping up quickly through hands on contribution.
• Ability to balance depth in core technologies with a broad working understanding of adjacent platforms and tools.
• Willingness to challenge existing approaches while remaining pragmatic and focused on delivery.

Key Responsibilities
• Serve as a technical authority and hands on contributor for complex, distributed systems supporting Corporate & Institutional Bank and Treasury Management business capabilities.
• Partner with business and technology stakeholders to evaluate options, influence decisions, and achieve consensus on architectural and design approaches.
• Lead architecture and design decisions for microservices and event driven platforms, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and aligned with enterprise standards.
• Drive end to end technical ownership-from solution design through implementation, deployment, and operational support.
• Strong problem solving skills, including the ability to break down complex problems, evaluate alternatives, and recommend sound solutions.
• Mentor and coach engineers across multiple teams, providing guidance on system design, coding practices, and technical growth.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices around code quality, testing, performance, security, and observability.
• Identify and proactively address technical debt, architectural risks, and performance bottlenecks.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and effectively to audiences at all levels of the organization, including senior executives.
• Champion a DevSecOps mindset, ensuring CI/CD, automation, reliability, and operational readiness are treated as first class concerns.

Required Technical Expertise
• Strong understanding of software architecture principles, including microservices, event driven architectures, and domain driven design concepts.
• Broad foundational knowledge across networking, operating systems, and application security.
• Strong proficiency in Java, with deep hands on experience using Spring Boot, Hibernate, RESTful services, and microservices based architectures.
• Experience designing and developing solutions using:
oCore Java
oSQL (MySQL or equivalent relational databases)
oMessaging and streaming platforms such as ActiveMQ and Kafka
• Hands on experience with authentication and authorization mechanisms, API frameworks (REST; GraphQL a plus), and persistence layers.
• Proven experience in database design, optimization, and data modeling across both relational and NoSQL data stores.

Preferred / Desired Skills
• Interest in and exposure to a broad range of modern technologies, such as:
oAgentic or applied AI use cases
oMicrosoft 365 Copilot and productivity focused AI tools
oOpenShift and Kubernetes
oCloud platforms such as Azure or AWS
• Knowledge of performance tuning, application security, and scalability best practices.
• Experience with DevOps and cloud native practices, including:
oCI/CD pipelines
oContainerization and orchestration (OpenShift, Kubernetes)
• Hands on experience with CI/CD tooling such as Bitbucket, Jenkins, or similar platforms.

PNC is an in-office company that fosters a supportive culture where employees can thrive and achieve balance. We encourage candidates to connect with their recruiter and hiring manager to understand workplace expectations and ensure the role aligns with their goals.

PNC will not provide sponsorship for employment visas or participate in STEM OPT for this position.

Job Description

• Aligns business strategy with software solutions.
• Proposes, designs & codes software solutions to address complex business needs. Oversees technical and procedural documentation required.
• Leads complex problem solving.
• Provides technical guidance and support to colleagues and solution development.
• Displays an innovative approach to apply modern principles, methodologies and tools to advance business initiatives and capabilities.

PNC Employees take pride in our reputation and to continue building upon that we expect our employees to be:

• Customer Focused - Knowledgeable of the values and practices that align customer needs and satisfaction as primary considerations in all business decisions and able to leverage that information in creating customized customer solutions.
• Managing Risk - Assessing and effectively managing all of the risks associated with their business objectives and activities to ensure they adhere to and support PNC's Enterprise Risk Management Framework.

Qualifications

Successful candidates must demonstrate appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities for a role. Listed below are skills, competencies, work experience, education, and required certifications/licensures needed to be successful in this position.

Preferred Skills
Application Development, Business Management, Customer Solutions, Design, Group Problem Solving, Java Full Stack Development, MongoDB, Process Improvements, Release Management, Software Solutions, User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies
Application Design, Architecture, Packaged Application Integration, Product and Vendor Evaluation, Software Process Improvement (SPI), System Development Life Cycle, Technical Troubleshooting

Work Experience
Roles at this level typically require a university / college degree, with 5+ years of industry-relevant experience. Specific certifications are often required. In lieu of a degree, a comparable combination of education, job specific certification(s), and experience (including military service) may be considered.

Education
Bachelors

Certifications
No Required Certification(s)

Licenses
No Required License(s)

Benefits

PNC offers a comprehensive range of benefits to help meet your needs now and in the future. Depending on your eligibility, options for full-time employees include: medical/prescription drug coverage (with a Health Savings Account feature), dental and vision options; employee and spouse/child life insurance; short and long-term disability protection; 401(k) with PNC match, pension and stock purchase plans; dependent care reimbursement account; back-up child/elder care; adoption, surrogacy, and doula reimbursement; educational assistance, including select programs fully paid; a robust wellness program with financial incentives.

In addition, PNC generally provides the following paid time off, depending on your eligibility: maternity and/or parental leave; up to 11 paid holidays each year; 9 occasional absence days each year, unless otherwise required by law; between 15 to 25 vacation days each year, depending on career level; and years of service.

To learn more about these and other programs, including benefits for full time and part-time employees, visit pncthrive.com.

Disability Accommodations Statement

If an accommodation is required to participate in the application process, please contact us via email at View email address on click.appcast.io. Please include "accommodation request" in the subject line title and be sure to include your name, the job ID, and your preferred method of contact in the body of the email. Emails not related to accommodation requests will not receive responses. Applicants may also call View phone number on click.appcast.io and say "Workday" for accommodation assistance. All information provided will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.


At PNC we foster an inclusive and accessible workplace. We provide reasonable accommodations to employment applicants and qualified individuals with a disability who need an accommodation to perform the essential functions of their positions.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

PNC provides equal employment opportunity to qualified persons regardless of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, veteran status, or other categories protected by law.

This position is subject to the requirements of Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) and, for any registered role, the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (SAFE Act) and/or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which prohibit the hiring of individuals with certain criminal history.

California Residents

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