Senior Principal Engineering Leader

Calling all innovators – find your future at Fiserv.

We’re Fiserv, a global leader in Fintech and payments, and we move money and information in a way that moves the world. We connect financial institutions, corporations, merchants, and consumers to one another millions of times a day – quickly, reliably, and securely. Any time you swipe your credit card, pay through a mobile app, or withdraw money from the bank, we’re involved. If you want to make an impact on a global scale, come make a difference at Fiserv.

Job Title

Senior Principal Engineering Leader

About your role:

As a Senior Principal Engineering Leader, you will lead the technical direction for highly available platform and infrastructure modernization across critical engineering domains. You will work with engineering, architecture, product, security, and site reliability engineering teams to solve complex distributed systems challenges, improve platform resilience, and guide production-safe modernization efforts. You will also help shape how AI is applied within engineering workflows and platform capabilities, with a focus on measurable impact, responsible implementation, and scalable adoption across multiple teams.

What you'll do:

• Lead the technical direction and engineering delivery for platform modernization initiatives, including migration from legacy architectures to microservices-based systems in high-availability production environments
• Design and evolve API gateway patterns, service mesh capabilities, and distributed service architectures that support secure, scalable, and resilient platforms
• Drive architecture decisions for complex engineering problems involving reliability, scalability, latency, migration risk, and operational continuity
• Establish engineering patterns, reference designs, and technical standards that improve consistency and delivery quality across multiple teams
• Guide and deliver phased, zero-downtime migration strategies that reduce production risk while improving platform maintainability and speed of change
• Partner with product, infrastructure, security, and site reliability engineering teams to align and delivery on technical solutions with business priorities, operational requirements, and risk controls
• Identify, evaluate, and guide the adoption of AI and machine learning capabilities within engineering platforms, development workflows, or operational processes based on measurable business and technical outcomes
• Define technical patterns and guardrails for responsible use of AI in software engineering, including model integration, data handling, observability, performance monitoring, and risk management
• Influence large cross-functional initiatives through architecture reviews, design guidance, and hands-on technical leadership
• Mentor senior engineers through design reviews, engineering best practices, and technical problem solving
• Responsibilities listed are not intended to be all-inclusive and may be modified as necessary.

Experience you'll need to have:

• 12+ years of experience in engineering delivery, software engineering, platform engineering, or distributed systems engineering, including architecting and delivering highly available production platforms
• 12+ years of experience designing and building distributed services using Java, Go, or similar object-oriented or compiled programming languages
• 10+ years of experience with API platform engineering, service-oriented architectures, or platform infrastructure in large-scale environments
• 10+ years of experience leading legacy modernization or microservices transformation initiatives using phased migration approaches in production systems
• 8+ years of experience with service mesh and proxy technologies such as Istio, Envoy, or equivalent technologies
• 8+ years of experience with infrastructure-as-code practices using Terraform or equivalent technologies in cloud or hybrid environments
• 8+ years of experience influencing architecture standards, design reviews, or engineering best practices across multiple teams
• 3+ years of experience evaluating, integrating, or implementing AI, machine learning, or generative AI capabilities in software engineering, platform engineering, or operational workflows
• 3+ years of experience defining technical requirements, controls, or implementation patterns for AI-enabled solutions, including model integration, application performance, or data usage considerations
• Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, computer engineering, information technology, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education, related experience and/or military experience

Experience that would be great to have:

• Experience in financial services, payments, or other transaction-intensive platforms
• Experience supporting platforms serving 100M+ users or similarly large-scale distributed environments
• Experience with observability, resilience engineering, and fault-tolerant system design
• Experience with AI-assisted developer tools, intelligent automation, or model-enabled platform capabilities

How you'll work:

• This role requires use of a computer and audio equipment.

Travel: This role requires occasional travel (up to 10%).

This role is not eligible to be performed in Colorado, California, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island or Washington.

It is unlawful to discriminate against a prospective employee due to the individual's status as a veteran.

Please note that salary ranges provided for this role on external job boards are salary estimates made by outside parties and may not be accurate.

Thank you for considering employment with Fiserv.  Please:

• Apply using your legal name
• Complete the step-by-step profile and attach your resume (either is acceptable, both are preferable).

Our commitment to Equal Opportunity:

Fiserv is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other category protected by law. 

If you have a disability and require a reasonable accommodation in completing a job application or otherwise participating in the overall hiring process, please contact AskHR.US@fiserv.com. Please note our AskHR representatives do not have visibility to your application status. Current associates who require a workplace accommodation should refer to Fiserv’s Disability Accommodation Policy for additional information.

Note to agencies:

Fiserv does not accept resume submissions from agencies outside of existing agreements. Please do not send resumes to Fiserv associates. Fiserv is not responsible for any fees associated with unsolicited resume submissions.

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