Principal Software Engineer – Distributed Systems &

About The Role

Career Area:
Engineering
Job Description:
Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.
When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.
Role Summary
We’re seeking aPrincipalSoftwareEngineer to build and evolve large-scale, distributed systems that power mission-critical platforms. This is a senior technical leadership role forengineers who thrive on solving hard, ambiguous problems at scale, and who can influence architecture across teams.
You will drive system design, scalability, andengineering excellence, while remaining deeply hands-on in building high-performance backend systems on a modern cloud-native stack.
What You’ll Do

Architect and buildhigh-throughput, low-latency distributed systems usingJavaand microservices
Leadend-to-end system design across services, data, and platform layers
Design forscale, resilience, fault tolerance, and operability from first principles
Build and operatecontainerized workloads on Kubernetes (multi-service, production scale)
Define and raise the bar onarchitecture, APIs, andengineering quality standards
Drivecross-team technical decisions and resolve complex system bottlenecks
Mentor seniorengineers and act as atechnical multiplier across teams
Influenceplatform roadmap, modernization, and developer productivity

Basic Qualifications

12+ years of experience building and operating backend systems at scale
Strong expertise inJava, Spring Boot, Microservices, Distributed Systems
Proven experience designinghighly available, large-scale systems (traffic, data, or compute)
Hands-on withKubernetes and Docker in production environments
Strong fundamentals insystem design, concurrency, data modeling, and performance optimization
Deep experience withPostgreSQL or similar databases

Preferred Qualifications

Experience withevent-driven architectures (Kafka / streaming systems)
Exposure tocloud platforms (AWS/Azure) and hybrid architectures
Experience withobservability, reliabilityengineering, and production operations
Contributions toplatformengineering, frameworks, or internal developer platforms
Track record ofinfluencing architecture across multiple teams or product