Principal Software Engineer

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Appian Corporation

Chennai, India

On-site

Posted April 6, 2026

Job Description

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

Summary:
The Principal Software Engineer will leverage their expertise in AWS and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to design, build, and scale highly reliable cloud platforms. This role is pivotal in defining infrastructure architecture, promoting automation-first practices, and mentoring engineers to deliver secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud solutions. The successful candidate will collaborate with platform, security, SRE, and product teams to facilitate self-service, zero-touch infrastructure provisioning, enhancing developer velocity across the organization.

Responsibilities:

Design and own cloud infrastructure architectures on AWS using Infrastructure as Code.
Lead the development of reusable, versioned IaC modules and frameworks.
Build and maintain infrastructure using tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK, and Ansible.
Implement CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure provisioning and change management.
Drive immutable infrastructure and automated environment lifecycle management.
Define best practices for scalability, availability, security, and cost optimization.
Review architecture designs and code to ensure high quality and maintainability.
Enable self-service provisioning for internal teams.
Design secure, compliant environments following least privilege and defense-in-depth principles.
Mentor junior software engineers and share expert knowledge across the department.
Identify opportunities for code refactoring and performance optimizations.
Advise product management on technical opportunities and constraints.
Collaborate with architects to promote consistency and advance Appian's technology state.
Contribute to Appian's long-term documentation with high-quality content.

Required Skills:

Deep expertise with AWS services including EC2, Auto Scaling, EKS, ECS, Lambda, VPC, ALB/NLB, Route 53, PrivateLink, EBS, EFS, S3, IAM, KMS, and Secrets Manager.
15+ years of experience in designing and implementing cloud infrastructure architectures.
Strong understanding of cost optimization and cloud economics.
Experience supporting regulated environments (SOC2, FedRAMP, HIPAA, etc.).
Experience with Kubernetes (EKS) and containerized workloads.
Familiarity with GitOps workflows.
Proven leadership skills and the ability to mentor and develop engineering talent.
Excellent communication skills for articulating technical designs to varied audiences.

Tools and Resources

Training and Development: During onboarding, we focus on equipping new hires with the skills and knowledge for success through department-specific training. Continuous learning is a central focus at Appian, with dedicated mentorship and the First-Friend program being widely utilized resources for new hires.
Growth Opportunities: Appian provides a diverse array of growth and development opportunities, including our leadership program tailored for new and aspiring managers, a comprehensive library of specialized department training through Appian University, skills based training, and tuition reimbursement for those aiming to advance their education. This commitment ensures that employees have access to a holistic range of development opportunities.
Community: We

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