Principal Software Engineer

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to own the technical vision, architecture, and long-term health of our core business systems. You will design scalable, secure, and cost-effective solutions primarily built on AWS cloud-native services, .NET backend ecosystem, Oracle PL/SQL for data-heavy logic, and Metabase for analytics & self-service BI.

This is a senior-most hands-on architecture role — you will combine deep technical expertise with strategic thinking, mentor senior engineers, make trade-off decisions that affect millions in cloud spend and developer productivity, and ensure the system remains evolvable for the next 5–10 years.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the overall technical and reference designs for mission-critical systems (microservices, event-driven patterns, data pipelines, reporting layer)

• Lead end-to-end architectural decisions across AWS (multi-account strategy, landing zone, networking, security posture, cost governance, disaster recovery)

• Design high-performance .NET (C#/.NET 6+) backend services — REST/GraphQL APIs, background workers, domain-driven design, clean/hexagonal architecture

• Architect data-intensive components using PL/SQL in Oracle databases — complex stored procedures, performant batch processing, data modeling, partitioning, materialized views

• Own the analytics & BI architecture — integrate Metabase with data sources (RDS, Redshift, S3/Parquet, Athena), design semantic layers, govern self-service analytics access, optimize query performance

• Create and maintain architectural runway: patterns, decision records (ADRs), reference implementations, golden paths for developers

• Conduct architecture reviews, threat modeling, and deep-dive technical due-diligence for major initiatives

• Collaborate closely with engineering managers, product managers, security, DevOps, and data teams to align architecture with business priorities

• Drive modernization initiatives (e.g. lift-and-shift → cloud-native, monolith → microservices, legacy PL/SQL → hybrid serverless patterns)

• Establish and enforce engineering excellence standards: observability (CloudWatch + X-Ray + custom metrics), CI/CD, IaC (Terraform/CDK/.NET), automated testing pyramid, security by design

• Mentor Staff/Senior engineers and lead communities of practice (architecture guild, .NET/AWS/Oracle chapters)

• Keep abreast of AWS Well-Architected Framework updates, .NET ecosystem evolution, Oracle database advancements, and BI tooling trends

Required Qualifications & Experience

• 12+ years of software engineering/architecture experience, with at least 5 years in a principal/senior or equivalent role

• Deep hands-on expertise in AWS (certifications like Solutions Architect Professional / DevOps Engineer Professional highly desirable) Strong experience with: ECS/EKS/Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, RDS (Oracle/SQL Server), Aurora, S3, Glue, Athena, Step Functions, IAM, Organizations/SCPs, CloudFormation/CDK/Terraform

• Very strong .NET background — modern .NET 6/7/8, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, Minimal APIs, gRPC, worker services, DDD/CQRS patterns

• Expert-level PL/SQL & Oracle Database design & tuning experience (10+ years preferred) Performance optimization, bulk processing, advanced indexing, partitioning, PL/SQL unit testing

• Practical experience integrating & extending Metabase in production environments (data source connectors, permissions model, embedding, caching, query governance)

• Proven track record designing systems that handle high transaction volume, large datasets, and strict SLAs (99.9%+ uptime)

• Strong understanding of distributed systems challenges, eventual consistency, CAP theorem trade-offs, saga/orchestration patterns

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, GitOps, and modern DevOps practices
  
  Morningstar is an equal opportunity employer

Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.