Top Principal Software Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Lead technical vision and cross-team architecture for large-scale, high-volume backend systems. Mentor senior engineers, solve scalability and infrastructure issues, set code and design standards, and partner with product and design to deliver secure, AI-enabled consumer healthcare solutions.

The Principal Software Engineer will lead platform initiatives, promote AI usage, ensure architecture stability, mentor engineers, and influence technical strategy across teams.

Lead reliability, performance, and operational excellence for large-scale ad-tech distributed systems. Design and operate monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, automation, and secure production infrastructure. Mentor engineers, influence architecture for production readiness, run on-call rotations, and drive continuous improvement of engineering operations and observability.

Lead reliability, performance, and operational excellence for large-scale ad-tech platforms. Design and operate monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, automation, and secure production practices. Mentor engineers, influence architecture for production readiness, drive change management, and participate in on-call rotations for complex distributed systems.

The Principal Software Engineer will design and optimize backend applications/services, improve payment integration, and oversee code quality within AWS.

The Principal Software Engineer will define technical roadmaps, guide system architecture, mentor leaders, and drive product direction in Capital Supply operations.

Lead security architecture and threat modeling for the DNSid platform. Design cryptographic core, build secure SDKs (TypeScript, Go, Python), enforce supply-chain and deployment security, partner on standards (IETF), and own org-wide security posture including secrets management, SOC 2 readiness, and incident response.

Lead and mentor an engineering team building GovIntel and GovChannel product capabilities. Own technical direction, design and deliver scalable SaaS features, APIs, integrations, and platform reliability. Partner with Product, QA, Cloud Ops, and stakeholders to prioritize work, drive CI/CD and observability practices, lead reviews and incident response, and apply AI-assisted tools to improve development speed and quality.

The Principal Software Engineer at Dropbox leads technical strategy and execution on critical software systems, focusing on AI integration and product development across teams. The role requires deep technical expertise and a collaborative approach to shaping company objectives and long-term strategies.

Lead the architectural design and development of a new consumer credit product, focusing on backend systems, distributed services, and integrating AI tools. Mentor team members and influence product direction through engineering insights.

As a Principal Software Engineer for the AAP team at Toast, you will design scalable systems, develop technical strategies, mentor engineers, and enhance data-driven initiatives.

As a Senior Principal Engineer, you'll define and drive the technical strategy for customer experience platforms, lead architectural decisions, and mentor engineering teams to enhance customer and agent experiences.

Design, develop, and optimize high-performance trading systems; mentor junior engineers and enhance system monitoring for secure trade execution.

The Principal Software Engineer leads a team to develop full-stack real-time applications, integrates machine learning models, and influences software architecture in cloud environments while supporting healthcare analytics.

Senior individual contributor who architects and builds IAA's Azure-based data platform (ingestion, transformation, semantic modeling, delivery). Designs and implements complex production data pipelines, supports BI and ML workloads, sets standards, mentors engineers, and partners with business and engineering leaders to enable analytics, forecasting, and AI.

The role involves building and optimizing a machine learning and simulation platform, supporting MLOps, model deployment, and infrastructure modernization, while mentoring engineers.

Technical individual-contributor leader designing and architecting cloud-native, microservices-based payment systems. Partners with product, mentors engineers, drives CI/CD, automated testing, and operational readiness while ensuring security, scalability, and cross-functional alignment within FinTech.

The Principal Software Engineer will drive the technical roadmap for Panthey's hosting platform, architect core services, and provide technical leadership and mentoring to engineers. They will work on distributed systems, container orchestration, and AI-native engineering practices, ensuring platform reliability and performance.

Lead design and implementation of AI-enabled ITSM and lifecycle automation: integrate ServiceNow and enterprise platforms, build reusable AI-driven automation skills, automate incident/problem/change workflows, improve data flows and observability, and deliver dashboards and playbooks to accelerate end-of-life lifecycle execution and reduce manual effort.

Lead technical aspects of an engineering team, design and revamp systems, improve efficiency, mentor engineers, and contribute to product strategy.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will architect WEX's Data-as-a-Service platform, set standards, guide strategy, and mentor teams while driving innovation with modern technologies.

Lead design, architecture, and hands-on implementation of scalable healthcare SaaS systems. Drive interoperability (HL7, FHIR, EDI), mentor engineers, liaise with stakeholders, manage technical risk, and ensure quality, performance, security, and innovation.

Founding engineer responsible for architecting and building core product systems, writing scalable Python backend code, designing and maintaining AI/ML infrastructure, instituting best development practices (testing, CI/CD), collaborating on product roadmap, and mentoring future engineers.

Design, build, and improve Elasticsearch distributed-systems components for scalable, concurrent, and consistent indexing. Maintain cluster coordination for performance and resilience, push system scale limits, investigate performance and concurrency issues, support operations/support engineers, and lead projects involving multiple engineers from design through delivery.

The Principal Software Engineer will lead the integration of AI with a focus on developing data orchestration solutions, modernizing legacy systems, and enhancing web infrastructure for optimal performance.