Principal Engineer (Java/Node, AWS)

Position Overview

Autodesk is seeking Principal Engineer to lead the architecture and evolution of our Concurrent Editing Platform, powering real-time collaboration at scale. This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, and real-time communication technologies, combined with the ability to lead complex cross-functional initiatives across engineering organizations. You will drive technical strategy, influence platform direction, mentor engineers, and deliver scalable, resilient systems that directly impact business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Led the architecture and development of scalable, real-time collaboration platforms using Java or Node.js, Spring Boot, WebSockets, REST APIs, AWS ECS, Redis, and Kafka, enabling low-latency, highly available communication across distributed systems

• Design and drive distributed, event-driven microservices architectures with strong focus on scalability, resiliency, latency, and observability.

• Own platform capabilities end-to-end including architecture, engineering practices, quality, deployment, operational excellence, and production support.

• Lead large, ambiguous technical initiatives from requirements clarification through execution and successful delivery.

• Drive technical discussions and alignment across teams, architects, product management, and platform engineering groups.

• Act as a technical leader during production incidents, driving root cause analysis, resolution, and systemic improvements.

• Mentor engineers and elevate engineering excellence through design reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing.

• Influence engineering direction across organizations and serve as a force multiplier for teams.

• Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with strong expertise in backend and distributed systems.

• Extensive experience developing microservices using Java, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA, and RESTful APIs.

• Deep hands-on experience with AWS cloud services

• Proven experience building scalable, highly available distributed platforms and microservices.

• Strong understanding of concurrency, event-driven systems, caching, synchronization, and fault-tolerant architectures.

• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams.

• Spec Driven Development, AI tools for PDLC at various stages, implementation, verification, deployments, operations etc.

• Strong technical leadership, problem-solving, communication, and mentoring skills.