Principal Software Engineer
Rocket Software2 hours ago
Newbury, United KingdomStaff+
Responsibilities
- Architect, design, and implement core components for COBOL development tools, runtime environments, and mainframe replatforming infrastructure.
- Provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams building compilers, runtimes, middleware, and distributed systems.
- Drive legacy application modernization strategies, including cloud migration, workload transformation, and hybrid deployments.
- Own complex technical domains end-to-end from design through production while balancing long-term architecture with immediate product needs.
- Build reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure software for mission-critical enterprise environments.
- Conduct code reviews, troubleshoot production issues, and mentor engineers in system-level design and performance optimization.
- Collaborate with product management, System Test, DevOps, and release engineering on roadmap priorities and high-quality releases.
- Champion automated testing, performance benchmarking, observability, maintainability, and engineering excellence.
Requirements
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leadership of complex, multi-team technical initiatives.
- Deep expertise in systems-level software development involving compilers, runtimes, operating systems, or infrastructure platforms.
- Strong experience developing mission-critical, high-availability software.
- Demonstrated experience with COBOL, PL/I, C, or C++, or significant lower-level language experience with willingness to learn COBOL domain internals.
- Track record building or modernizing enterprise-grade tooling, middleware, or distributed systems.
- Ability to analyze legacy architectures, evaluate modernization paths, and design scalable solutions.
- Preferred: experience with mainframe-to-cloud migration, workload replatforming, or runtime compatibility layers.
- Preferred: familiarity with Azure, AWS, or hybrid cloud architectures.
- Preferred: understanding of static and dynamic language runtimes, compiler pipelines, and virtual machine internals.
- Preferred: technical mentorship or architectural leadership spanning multiple scrum teams.
- Preferred: diagnostic skills for low-level performance, memory, concurrency, or runtime issues.
Benefits
- Remote work is indicated by the #LI-Remote designation.
- Opportunity to influence mission-critical modernization technologies used worldwide and shape architecture across multiple product portfolios.
- Work with an experienced engineering organization and a culture emphasizing technical depth, thoughtful engineering, and long-term product stewardship.
- The employer provides equal opportunity employment and reasonable accommodation for disabilities.
- Background and reference checks are part of the hiring process.
About Rocket Software
As a global technology leader, Rocket Software is the partner of choice for organizations transforming their IT from core systems to the cloud. We are trusted by over 13,500 customers and 850 partners, and backed by a global team of more than 3,000 talented employees. Together, we help companies unlock the full potential of their data, applications, and infrastructure—without disruption. Headquartered in the Boston area, Rocket Software is a privately held corporation driving IT innovation with centers of excellence strategically located across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Rocket Software is a portfolio company of Bain Capital Private Equity.