JOB DESCRIPTION
Principal Software Engineer / Lead (.NET)
Bill Rate: ***/hr
Location: Onsite 4 days a week
1. Position Snapshot
Job Title
Principal Software Engineer / Lead (.NET)
Department / Team
Digital
Reports To
Sr. Manager - Architecture & Application Development
Career Track
Blend of Individual Contributor & Lead highest IC level below Distinguished Engineer; peer-level to [Sr. Manager / Manager]
Direct Reports
20 engineering team members
Scope of Influence
4 6 engineering teams / ~20 engineers across 3 product lines
Location
Windsor, CT Hybrid ([4 days onsite per week
Employment Type
Contract-to-Hire
Experience Required
15+ years
2. Role Summary
WM SBS is seeking a Principal Software Engineer (.NET) to provide technical leadership across our enterprise application landscape. This is our most senior individual contributor engineering role: you will set architectural direction, raise the engineering bar across multiple teams, and lead platform modernization while remaining hands-on in design, code, and critical problem-solving.
You will pair deep Microsoft-stack expertise with strong systems architecture judgment, translating business strategy into scalable, secure, and maintainable technical solutions. Success in this role is measured less by what you build personally and more by the leverage you create: better architecture, faster and safer delivery, and a stronger engineering organization.
3. Expectations from the Position
3.1 Level Expectations
" Scope: Impact spans multiple teams, systems, and product lines not a single application or squad.
" Ambiguity: Operates effectively on problems that are undefined, contested, or cross-organizational; frames the problem before solving it.
" Autonomy: Sets technical direction with minimal oversight; is accountable for outcomes, not tasks.
" Hands-on balance: Approximately [50 60%] architecture, design, technical leadership, and mentorship; [40 50%] hands-on engineering prototypes, critical-path code, complex debugging, and reference implementations.
" Decision rights: Owns or co-owns architecture decisions; contributes to enterprise standards through the Architecture Review Board / equivalent forum.
3.2 Performance Milestones
Timeframe
Expected Outcomes
First 30 Days
Build relationships across engineering, products, security, and infrastructure. Develop a working map of the current architecture, delivery pipeline, and pain points. Deliver an initial observations summary.
First 90 Days
Publish an assessment of architectural risk and technical debt with a prioritized remediation view. Lead at least one architecture decision end-to-end. Establish a recurring design-review cadence.
First 6 Months
Own a published, socialized technical roadmap for [platform/domain]. Drive measurable improvement in at least two engineering health metrics. Establish standards adopted by multiple teams.
First 12 Months
Demonstrate delivery of a major modernization milestone. Evidence of raised engineering capability through mentorship and standards adoption. Recognized as a trusted technical advisor by senior business and technology leadership.
3.3 How Performance Will Be Measured
" Architectural quality and consistency across supported platforms (e.g., reduction in bespoke integration patterns, standards adoption rate)***
" Delivery health: DORA metrics deployment frequency, lead time for change, change failure rate*** mean time to restore.
" Reliability: attainment of agreed SLOs, reduction in Sev-1/Sev-2 incident volume and recurrence.
" Modernization progress: percentage of workload migrated off legacy .NET Framework; measurable technical debt reduction.
" Security posture: reduction in critical/high vulnerabilities, remediation cycle time, secure-by-design adoption.
" Talent impact: growth of senior engineers mentored, quality of design reviews, internal knowledge artifacts produced.
" Cloud efficiency: cost-per-transaction or infrastructure spend trend against workload growth.
4. Roles & Responsibilities
4.1 Technical Leadership
" Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor across multiple engineering teams.
" Establish and promote engineering standards, architectural principles, and development best practices.
" Lead technical reviews, architecture discussions, and strategic technology decisions.
" Drive consistency in software design, implementation, deployment, and operational practices.
" Provide guidance on complex technical and business challenges, including production escalations of significant business impact.
" Document and defend significant decisions through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and design documents.
4.2 Architecture & Solution Design
" Design scalable, resilient, and maintainable enterprise solutions using modern .NET technologies.
" Define application architecture, integration patterns, system boundaries, and service ownership models.
" Lead architectural governance and ensure alignment with enterprise technology standards.
" Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption strategies grounded in cost, risk, and organizational readiness.
" Drive long-term technical roadmaps aligned with business objectives and funding cycles.
" Perform architecture risk assessments, including threat modeling and failure-mode analysis for critical systems.
4.3 Modernization & Platform Evolution
" Lead modernization of legacy .NET Framework applications and migration to modern .NET platforms.
" Drive adoption of cloud-native architectures, microservices, event-driven systems, and API-first design applying each where justified rather than by default.
" Identify and reduce technical debt through structured, business-justified modernization programs.
" Improve system scalability, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
" Define migration sequencing, coexistence patterns, and rollback strategies that protect business continuity.
4.4 Software Engineering Excellence
" Champion engineering quality through code reviews, design reviews, and technical mentorship.
" Promote clean architecture, SOLID principles, domain-driven design, and secure coding practices.
" Establish and improve automated testing, observability, and quality engineering practices.
" Mentor senior engineers, technical leads, and engineering managers; contribute to technical hiring and interview standards.
" Foster a culture of continuous improvement, blameless postmortems, and technical excellence.
4.5 Platform Engineering & DevOps
" Partner with infrastructure, platform, security, and operations teams to improve engineering productivity.
" Support implementation of self-service engineering capabilities and internal developer platform practices.
" Drive CI/CD standardization, automation, and deployment safety (progressive delivery, feature flags, automated rollback).
" Promote Infrastructure as Code and modern deployment practices.
" Ensure solutions meet reliability, security, compliance, and operational requirements, including SLOs and error budgets.
4.6 Security, Risk & Compliance
[New expected for a regulated-industry employer; confirm applicable frameworks.]
" Embed secure-by-design and privacy-by-design practices into architecture and delivery standards.
" Ensure solutions satisfy applicable regulatory and audit obligations
" Partner with Information Security on threat modeling, vulnerability management, identity and access architecture, and data protection.
" Contribute to disaster recovery and business continuity design, including RTO/RPO validation and resilience testing.
4.7 AI-Assisted Engineering & Emerging Technology
" Define standards for responsible use of AI coding assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot) including review, security, and IP considerations.
" Evaluate and guide adoption of AI/GenAI capabilities within enterprise applications, including integration patterns, evaluation, and guardrails.
" Ensure AI-assisted development improves throughput without degrading code quality, security, or maintainability.
4.8 Cross-Functional Collaboration
" Collaborate with Product Management, Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, Data, and business stakeholders.
" Translate business goals into scalable technical solutions, and technical trade-offs into business terms.
" Participate in strategic planning, capacity forecasting, and technology investment decisions.
" Communicate architectural vision and technical direction to both technical and non-technical audiences, up to and including executive leadership.
" Support vendor and third-party technology evaluations where relevant.
5. Technical Expertise
Category
Technologies & Capabilities
Languages & Frameworks (Core)
C#; .NET 8 (LTS) and current .NET releases; ASP.NET Core; ASP.NET MVC; Web API; Entity Framework Core; async/concurrent programming; legacy .NET Framework (4.x) for modernization context
Architecture (Core)
Distributed systems; microservices and modular monoliths; domain-driven design; event-driven architecture; API-first and contract-driven design; integration and messaging patterns; CQRS; resilience patterns (retry, circuit breaker, bulkhead, idempotency)
Cloud (Core)
Microsoft Azure App Service, Azure Functions, AKS, Service Bus / Event Hubs / Event Grid, API Management, Key Vault, Entra ID, Azure Monitor; landing zone and well-architected principles
DevOps & Platform (Core)
Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions; CI/CD pipeline design; Docker; Kubernetes; Terraform and/or Bicep; Git branching and release strategy; artifact and dependency management
Data (Core)
SQL Server; Azure SQL; performance tuning and query optimization; data modeling; NoSQL (e.g., Cosmos DB); caching (Redis); schema migration and zero-downtime data change strategy
Quality & Operations (Core)
Automated testing strategy (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end); test automation in CI; observability (Open Telemetry, Application Insights); logging, metrics, distributed tracing; performance and load engineering; incident response
Security Engineering (Core)
OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect; secrets management; secure SDLC; SAST/DAST/SCA tooling; threat modeling; encryption in transit and at rest; vulnerability remediation
Supporting / Contextual
Front-end awareness (React / Angular / Blazor) sufficient to review full-stack designs; messaging platforms (Kafka, RabbitMQ); mainframe or legacy system integration; FinOps and cloud cost optimization; AI-assisted development tooling
6. Required Qualifications
" Bachelor s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related discipline or equivalent practical experience.
" 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant experience in enterprise application development.
" Deep expertise in C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, and modern .NET platforms.
" Demonstrated experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale distributed systems in production.
" Strong command of software architecture patterns and principles, with the judgment to know when not to apply them.
" Track record of leading technical initiatives across multiple teams without direct authority.
" Experience delivering cloud-based solutions in a production environment (Azure preferred).
" Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, including production incident diagnosis in complex systems.
" Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders.
7. Preferred Qualifications
" Experience with cloud platforms, particularly Microsoft Azure, at enterprise scale.
" Knowledge of platform engineering and internal developer platforms.
" Experience with event-driven architecture and messaging platforms.
" Experience building highly available, mission-critical applications with defined SLAs/SLOs.
" Experience in insurance, financial services, healthcare, or another regulated industry.
" Experience leading large-scale legacy modernization or cloud migration programs end-to-end.
" Relevant certifications: Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, or equivalent.
" Experience with SRE practices SLO definition, error budgets, and incident command.
" Contributions to open source, technical publications, conference speaking, or internal engineering communities.
" Experience in integrating AI/GenAI capabilities into enterprise applications.
8. Leadership Traits & Behavioral Competencies
8.1 Core Leadership Expectations
" Influence technical strategy beyond a single application or team.
" Drive architectural consistency across the organization.
" Establish engineering standards and governance that teams adopt willingly.
" Mentor and develop technical talent at senior and lead levels.
" Balance business priorities with long-term platform sustainability.
" Lead by example through hands-on technical contribution and architectural leadership.
8.2 Behavioral Traits
Trait
What It Looks Like in This Role
Influence Without Authority
Builds consensus across teams that do not report to them; wins adoption through clarity and credibility rather than mandate.
Pragmatic Judgment
Chooses the appropriate solution for the context and constraints; resists over-engineering and technology fashion.
Business Fluency
Frames technical decisions in terms of cost, risk, revenue, and time-to-market; understands the commercial context of the platform.
Communication Range
Adjusts depth and language effectively from engineer to executive; writes clearly and persuasively.
Mentorship & Multiplication
Measures success by the capability of others; delegates meaningful technical ownership rather than hoarding it.
Ownership & Accountability
Takes responsibility for outcomes including failures; leads to blameless postmortems and drives corrective action.
Continuous Learning
Stays current with the .NET and cloud ecosystem and shares knowledge systematically.
Resilience Under Pressure
Remains calm and decisive during major incidents, escalations, and competing executive priorities.