Principal Engineer – Automation

Wells Fargo

. Advise senior leadership on architecture and development across applications, platforms, APIs, network automation, security, data systems, operating environments, and cloud-native technologies .

Posted 9/17/2026full-timeIrving • Arizona • United StatesLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAnsibleApacheCloudDistributed SystemsDockerGrafanaGRPCJavaKubernetesMicroservicesOpenShiftPrometheusPythonSplunkTerraformTypeScriptGo.NET

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Advise senior leadership on architecture and development across applications, platforms, APIs, network automation, security, data systems, operating environments, and cloud-native technologies
Lead resolution of complex engineering challenges across multiple technology domains
Design and develop production-grade software platforms, APIs, microservices, SDKs, libraries, automation frameworks, and reusable components
Define architectures for distributed, event-driven, and asynchronous systems
Establish standards for application structure, API design, code quality, testing, secure development, dependency management, versioning, releases, observability, and production readiness
Lead technical design reviews, architecture reviews, code reviews, failure-mode analysis, and production-readiness assessments
Build internal engineering platforms with self-service automation, standardized workflows, reusable services, and consistent developer experiences
Create paved roads and golden paths, reusable APIs, templates, SDKs, CI/CD pipelines, test harnesses, documentation, and automated onboarding
Design durable workflows for infrastructure and network processes using Temporal, Celery, or comparable technologies
Build reusable workflow components for validation, certification, approvals, deployment, verification, rollback, evidence collection, and exception handling
Design RESTful, event-driven, streaming, and standards-based integrations across enterprise platforms and infrastructure systems
Develop data pipelines and services for network state, lifecycle data, workflow execution, telemetry, release evidence, and operational outcomes
Design and operate containerized services using Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Helm, and comparable technologies
Develop CI/CD, GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, and configuration automation capabilities
Build automated testing across unit, component, contract, integration, regression, performance, resiliency, and end-to-end levels
Design highly available, fault-tolerant, scalable systems and establish SLI, SLO, error-budget, observability, and production-readiness practices
Implement dashboards, alerts, diagnostics, automated detection, remediation, rollback, and evidence capture
Design governed AI-assisted engineering services using RAG, semantic search, structured outputs, tool integration, evaluation, and human approval
Embed security, resiliency, auditability, identity, authorization, secrets management, least privilege, and policy enforcement into platform design
Translate leadership vision and business priorities into software strategies, architectural roadmaps, platform capabilities, and engineering initiatives
Influence multiple teams without direct management authority and mentor senior engineers, technical leads, architects, and emerging principal engineers
Evaluate new technologies through prototypes and evidence-based assessments and define adoption guidance and production-readiness criteria

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through work experience, training, military experience, or education
7+ years of software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, network automation, SRE, NRE, or equivalent experience
5+ years designing, developing, testing, and supporting production-grade software, distributed systems, automation platforms, or enterprise integration services
3+ years of advanced software development using Python and at least one additional modern programming language such as Go, Java, C#, .NET, or TypeScript
3+ years designing and developing APIs, microservices, asynchronous services, event-driven systems, workflow services, or comparable distributed software components
3+ years developing software using Git-based workflows, pull requests, peer review, versioning, package management, CI/CD, automated testing, and release management
3+ years deploying or supporting containerized applications using Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, or comparable platforms
3+ years integrating multiple systems through REST APIs, webhooks, messaging, events, SDKs, or service interfaces
3+ years designing for scalability, availability, resiliency, observability, security, and operational support
Strong knowledge of software engineering fundamentals, distributed systems, cloud-native technologies, network automation, observability, AI/data engineering, and security
Experience with workflow technologies such as Temporal, Celery, Argo Workflows, Apache Airflow, or Dagster
Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, OpenTofu, Ansible, or Pulumi
Experience with REST, RESTCONF, NETCONF, gRPC, webhooks, message queues, event streams, OpenAPI, JSON, and YAML
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Helm, CI/CD, GitOps, and cloud platforms
Experience with Nautobot, NetBox, or comparable network source-of-truth platforms
Experience with observability tools such as OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or Splunk
Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, vector search, structured outputs, tool calling, and AI evaluation
Experience with information security, secure development, identity, authorization, secrets management, auditability, and policy enforcement
Financial services or other highly regulated industry experience
Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, or related technical field is listed under Desired Qualifications
Relevant certifications are listed under Desired Qualifications

Benefits

Comp & perks

Equal opportunity employment
Accommodation for applicants with disabilities during recruitment and interview upon request
Drug-free workplace
Risk and compliance support through Wells Fargo policies and procedures