Principal Software Engineer

Job Purpose
At Emirates, we believe in connecting the world, to and through, our global hub in Dubai; and in constantly innovating to ensure our customers 'Fly Better'.

As a
Principal Software Engineer – iXR
, you will lead the end-to-end infrastructure and software design, technical governance, and development direction across the iXR platform. You will be accountable for end-to-end Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) ownership across iXR, embedding shift-left practices to ensure quality, security, and performance are addressed from design through delivery. Working closely with peer architects and quality engineers, you will define and enforce standards for automated testing, quality assurance, performance and scalability testing, and operational readiness, ensuring solutions are resilient, reliable, and production-grade. This role requires deep expertise in AWS, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD design and setup, and Python scripting.

You will lead and mentor a team of software and technical engineers responsible for designing, building, and operating high-quality iXR platform capabilities."

In This Role, You Will

• Lead the technical design, development and deployment of complex software solutions across teams. Carry out effective technical design reviews to ensure that the right architecture patterns are used by engineering teams.
• Champion development of best engineering practices and modernization techniques including process automation, lean software development, built-in-quality, test driven development, agile practices, optimal pairing strategies and timely root cause analysis and blameless incident post-mortems. Support defining and refining the software engineering playbooks for use by relevant people in Technology.
• Provide technical leadership and partner with cross-functional teams during discovery phase and in the development of high level design of medium to large projects. Drive proof-of-concepts and implement prototypes to validate ideas. Investigate, debug and fix complex issues involving corner cases and rare conditions.
• Identify and develop framework, tools and practices to improve delivery quality of technology solutions and productivity of engineers.
• Responsible for the measurement and monitoring of engineering metrics that enable agility, scalability, data quality and reliability of technology solutions across the enterprise.
• Contribute to the creation of world class engineering practices, play books and artefacts required to drive technical career of software engineers in line with the software engineering strategy. Support and guide the team of engineers in working autonomously in multi-disciplinary release trains.
• Ensure optimal use of enterprise application platforms, tools and libraries in line with the approved technology architecture and associated Software Vendors.
• Maintain a thorough understanding of interdependences and limitations within assigned technology area and solution operational context. Provide leadership, guidance and ongoing engagement with technical teams in the effective technical documentation of developed software.
• Manage multiple assigned teams, with accountability for hiring top talent, define development goals, manage performance, mentor and coach.
• Guide and support software engineering team definition decisions and staff movements according to program requirements, staff capability and development.

Qualification

To be considered for this role, you must meet the below requirements:

• Degree in Computer Science, Computational Mathematics, Computer Engineering or Software Engineering
• Experience in Information Technology, Software Engineering (preferably in airline) building complex, scalable and large software solutions in digital, data or enterprise domain.
• Deep, hands-on experience designing, building, and operating large-scale, cloud-native platforms on AWS, with strong knowledge of core AWS services, security and compliance controls, and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Proven ability to lead architectural decisions and make sound trade-offs on AWS across scalability, performance, resilience, cost, and operational complexity for business-critical platforms.

Knowledge/skills

• Broad knowledge of the technology stacks used for business solutions.

• AWS, Software Engineering, Platform Engineering

• Ability to use professional concepts and company objectives to solve complex issues.

• Research industry innovations and best practices. Apply appropriately in the solution domain.
• Partnering with technical and business leaders across the organization to drive value from the technology solutions.
• Identify and remove waste in the software development lifecycle to improve flow, throughput and productivity.
• Managing technology suppliers for complex solution development, global centers of excellence and distributed scaled agile practices.
• Strong knowledge in Scaled Agile methodology, with modern flexible working practices.
• Experience of developing advanced technology solutions for large, complex organisations in a multi-functional environment.

Leadership role: Yes

Salary & benefits

Join us in Dubai and enjoy an attractive tax-free salary and travel benefits that are exclusive to our industry, including discounts on flights and hotel stays around the world. Find out what it's like to live and work in our fast-paced, cosmopolitan home city in the Dubai Lifestyle section of our website