Principal Software Engineer

What You’ll Do:

This role has two centers of gravity. You'll be dispatched into product teams to help design and implement solutions, solve hard engineering problems, and you'll own the shared services that every one of our products depends on.

• You'll embed with product teams across our portfolio to take on their hardest technical problems, and you'll deliver working code — not just direction. This is a hands-on role at every level of seniority it carries.
• You'll own architectural decisions at both the application and service level, making calls that hold up under real production load and remain understandable to the engineers who inherit them.
• You'll own oversight of changes to Foundant's shared services, along with their ongoing production care and feeding.
• You'll diagnose systemic and architectural issues that cross component and service boundaries, including the ambiguous ones where the cause isn't in any single team's code.
• You'll lead solution design on significant initiatives, bringing a small group of engineers along with clear, well-articulated direction rather than handing down a finished answer.
• You'll set the standard for how AI-assisted development is used well at Foundant — where generation accelerates the work, where it needs a harder look, and how teams around you can raise their own bar.
• You'll move fluidly across products, domains, and service boundaries, leaving each team better equipped than you found it.
• Other duties as assigned.

What You’ll Need:

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time at a principal, staff, or equivalent senior individual contributor level.
• Demonstrated mastery of architectural patterns and the judgment to know which apply in a given context, at both the application and service level.
• Deep expertise in one or two of the technologies in our stack, with the ability to become productive in the others. Our environment includes Java, C#, TypeScript, Node.js, React, Python, and Flutter.
• Proven experience owning production services, including reliability, performance, and incident response.
• Professional experience using AI-assisted development tools in production work. Foundant uses Claude Code; deep expertise with a comparable tool is acceptable.
• Experience diagnosing complex issues that span multiple components, services, or teams.
• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States or Canada.

What You’ll Bring to our Team Dynamics:

• Adaptive Achievement: Moves between unfamiliar codebases, domains, and problem spaces without losing momentum, and delivers high-quality solutions under shifting priorities and incomplete context.
• Productive Collaboration: Leads engineers through complex initiatives by influence rather than authority — entering a team as a guest, earning trust quickly, and articulating direction clearly enough that the team can carry it forward without you.
• Service Orientation: Treats internal engineering teams as clients, and understands that the reliability of a shared service is ultimately felt by the foundations and nonprofits depending on our software to do their work.
• Business Insight: Weighs the blast radius of shared-service decisions across every product and client, balancing technical elegance against what actually advances the business and the communities we serve.
• Active Learning: Builds working depth in unfamiliar stacks quickly, and applies rigorous judgment to AI-generated code — knowing when to lean on it, when to scrutinize it, and how to help colleagues do the same.

Why You’ll Love Working at Foundant:

• At the heart of everything we do is a commitment to innovation and making a positive impact. Whether you’re working on projects that empower not-for-profits, community foundations, or corporations, your contributions will help drive real-world change. 
• We offer competitive salary and benefits, including tuition, and lifestyle reimbursements, and bespoke mindfulness and fitness initiatives.  
• With our Flexible PTO policy, you’ll have the freedom to manage your time in a way that supports your personal well-being and professional success. 
• We’re committed to your professional and personal development.  With our merger, you'll have the chance to collaborate across teams, giving you exposure to diverse ideas, expertise, and projects that span multiple industries.  
• As part of a larger organization, you’ll have even more opportunities to grow your career. Whether it’s exploring new roles, leadership opportunities, or shifting to a different department, we support internal mobility to help you achieve your career goals 
• You’ll enjoy autonomy and responsibility, empowering you to approach your work creatively and independently, fostering innovation and independent thought. 
• Employee recognition is a core part of our culture. When you do a great job, we make sure everyone knows about it!  

Foundant is an equal opportunity employer, committed to building a diverse workforce that represents the communities we serve. We welcome and encourage applications from all qualified candidates, and will consider all applicants without regard to race, color, citizenship, religion, sex, marital/family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, Indigenous status, age, disability, or individuals who may require accommodation. 

Foundant is also committed to providing accommodations throughout the interview and employment process. Accommodations are available upon request for candidates participating in all aspects of the selection process. If you have accessibility requirements during the recruitment process and require accommodation, please contact hr@smartsimple.com.