Principal Engineer

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal engineer for Architecture and Engineering team.

In this role, you will:

• Act as an advisor to leadership to develop or influence applications, network, information security, database, operating systems, or web technologies for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups
• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking
• Translate advanced technology experience, an in-depth knowledge of the organizations tactical and strategic business objectives, the enterprise technological environment, the organization structure, and strategic technological opportunities and requirements into technical engineering solutions
• Provide vision, direction and expertise to leadership on implementing innovative and significant business solutions
• Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommends innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization
• Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an expert advisor to leadership

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

Desired Qualifications:

1. Consumer Platform Architecture

• Lead architecture for high-scale consumer applications serving millions of users.
• Design systems optimized for:
• Low latency & high throughput
• Global distribution & edge delivery
• Seamless user experience (UX)
• Define architecture patterns for:
• Personalization engines
• Recommendation systems
• Real-time engagement platforms
• Ensure alignment with privacy, security, and compliance (GDPR, etc.).

2. Core Engineering (Java & Python at Scale)

• Architect and build distributed services using:
• Java (Spring Boot, reactive frameworks)
• Python (FastAPI, ML services)
• Drive standardization of APIs, SDKs, and shared platform services.
• Enable reusable platform capabilities for rapid product innovation.
• Solve complex challenges in concurrency, caching, and distributed data management.

3. AI/ML & LLM-Driven Consumer Experiences

• Design AI-powered features such as:
• Recommendations & personalization
• Conversational interfaces (chatbots, assistants)
• Content generation and summarization
• Build and scale LLM-based systems (RAG pipelines, prompt orchestration, agentic flows).
• Integrate with vector databases, embeddings, and real-time inference APIs.
• Ensure safe and responsible AI usage in consumer scenarios (bias, hallucination, privacy).

4. System Design & Distributed Architecture

• Architect robust systems using:
• Microservices, serverless, event-driven patterns
• Streaming platforms (Kafka, Event Hub, etc.)
• Design for:
• Horizontal scalability
• Fault isolation
• Graceful degradation
• Evaluate trade-offs across consistency, availability, and performance.

5. SDLC & Platform Engineering Excellence

• Define modern SDLC practices for high-velocity consumer product teams.
• Drive:
• CI/CD automation
• Blue-green & canary deployments
• Feature flag-driven releases
• Establish developer platforms for productivity and self-service infrastructure.
• Promote DevSecOps and shift-left practices.

6. Quality Engineering

• Establish scalable automated testing strategy:
• Functional, integration, and contract testing
• End-to-end testing for user journeys
• Drive experimentation frameworks (A/B testing) for consumer features.
• Ensure observability into user experience metrics (latency, errors, drop-offs).

7. Performance & Resiliency Engineering

• Design systems for peak traffic events and burst scalability.
• Implement:
• CDN strategies and caching layers
• Rate limiting and traffic shaping
• Lead performance benchmarking and tuning.
• Embed resilience patterns:
• Circuit breakers, retries, backpressure
• Chaos engineering and failure simulations
• Maintain high SLA/SLO for consumer-facing systems.

8. Stakeholder Management & Product Alignment

• Partner with:
• Product management
• UX/design teams
• Data science & analytics
• Translate business goals into consumer-centric technical solutions.
• Influence roadmap with data-driven insights and technical strategy.
• Communicate architecture and trade-offs to executive stakeholders.

9. Innovation & Consumer Focus

• Drive innovation in:
• AI-first consumer experiences
• Hyper-personalization
• Real-time engagement
• Stay ahead of trends in consumer tech, including:
• Generative AI
• Mobile-first and omnichannel platforms
• Lead POCs and experimentation pipelines.

Posting End Date: 

*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

We Value Equal Opportunity

Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit’s risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.

Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.

Applicants with Disabilities

To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo.

Drug and Alcohol Policy

Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace.  Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.

Wells Fargo Recruitment and Hiring Requirements:

a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.

b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.