Principal Engineer

KORE1, a nationwide provider of staffing and recruiting solutions, has an immediate opening for a Principal Engineer based in Denver, Co. The role is Hybrid with 3 days onsite each week.


About the Role
We are seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as a senior individual contributor responsible for driving technical strategy, solving complex engineering challenges, and influencing architectural direction across multiple teams. This role is ideal for someone who remains highly hands-on while providing technical leadership through mentorship, design reviews, and engineering excellence.

As a key technical leader, you will tackle large-scale, high-impact initiatives across the full technology stack, establish engineering standards, and help shape the future of modern software development practices. Success in this role requires strong technical judgment, a collaborative mindset, and the ability to guide teams through complex architectural decisions without direct people management responsibilities.

You will partner closely with engineering leaders, architects, product teams, and stakeholders to deliver scalable, reliable, and maintainable solutions while helping drive adoption of AI-enabled development practices across the organization.

Key Responsibilities
* Lead the design and implementation of complex, business-critical initiatives across the technology stack.
* Establish technical approaches, architectural patterns, and engineering standards that can be leveraged across multiple teams.
* Serve as a trusted technical advisor and mentor, helping engineers grow through design reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing.
* Remain actively involved in software development by contributing production code to critical systems and strategic initiatives.
* Partner with product, design, compliance, and engineering stakeholders to translate business goals into scalable technical solutions.
* Drive modernization efforts, helping evolve legacy systems into modern, cloud-native architectures.
* Promote best practices around software quality, reliability, scalability, and observability.
* Leverage AI-powered development tools throughout the software development lifecycle and help define best practices for their adoption.
* Collaborate across teams to align technical direction and ensure consistency in architecture and engineering practices.

Required Qualifications
* 8+ years of experience building and delivering production software solutions across the full technology stack.
* Strong front-end development experience with modern frameworks such as Vue.js, React, or similar technologies.
* Strong backend development experience using C#/.NET preferred; experience with Java, Kotlin, Go, or other object-oriented languages will also be considered.
* Solid understanding of responsive design, accessibility standards, web performance optimization, and internationalization.
* Strong SQL and relational database expertise.
* Deep experience with system architecture, distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven design patterns.
* Proven track record leading large, ambiguous, cross-functional technical initiatives as a senior individual contributor.
* Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without direct management responsibilities.
* Hands-on experience with AWS cloud services, CI/CD pipelines, and modern deployment practices.
* Experience with services and technologies such as SQS, DynamoDB, S3, ECS, Lambda, or comparable cloud-native solutions.
* Regular use of AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar technologies.
* Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts and architectural decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
* Experience working within financial services, fintech, payments, or other highly regulated industries.

Preferred Qualifications
* Experience leading platform modernization initiatives, large-scale migrations, or architectural transformations.
* Experience establishing engineering standards, technical governance, or organization-wide architecture strategies.
* Experience with caching technologies such as Redis or Memcached.
* Familiarity with project management and collaboration tools such as Jira and Confluence.
* Experience building automated testing frameworks and incorporating AI-assisted testing practices into development workflows.
* Experience contributing to engineering hiring, onboarding, or technical interview processes.

Desired Attributes
* Strong systems-thinking and problem-solving capabilities.
* Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity across complex technical initiatives.
* Passion for mentoring engineers and elevating overall team performance.
* Comfortable balancing strategic architecture work with hands-on technical execution.
* Collaborative mindset with a focus on building scalable solutions and long-term engineering success.

Job Requirements

Compensation depends on experience but is typically 110-165k DOE

ABOUT KORE1
Specializing in professional and technical recruiting, KORE1 is committed to supporting top IT, Engineering, Creative, Scientific, Accounting and Finance professionals in their career paths. We build deep relationships with leading companies, connecting them to exceptional talent every day. With extensive industry expertise and unmatched opportunities, our goal is to provide a unique experience for our contractors and consultants as they prepare for their next role. We are passionate about matching the right people with the right companies.

Kore1 provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Kore1 complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Kore1 expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of Kore1's employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge.