Principal Software Engineer-Platform & Services

Career Area:

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.

About the Role

We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer – Platform & Services to define and drive the data‑as‑a‑service (DaaS) and platform architecture for our Digital Manufacturing & Supply Chain Platform. You will set technical strategy, establish standards, and lead the design of secure, scalable, and high‑performance service layers that expose curated enterprise and IoT data to downstream consumers—applications, analytics, and simulation workloads—at global scale.

You will partner closely with Data Engineering and product/architecture leadership to transform data models and pipelines into well‑governed APIs, microservices, and event streams, enabling real‑time insights, predictive analytics, and digital‑twin experiences. The platform you shape will also power NVIDIA Omniverse‑driven digital twins and industrial simulation use cases as downstream consumers.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Architecture

• Own the end‑to‑end platform & services architecture (API/microservices/event‑driven) and align it to product strategy, business outcomes, and enterprise standards.
• Define domain boundaries, data contracts, and service interaction patterns (REST/gRPC/GraphQL, pub/sub) for real‑time and batch consumption across applications and analytics.
• Set technical standards for API lifecycle management (versioning, documentation, governance) and drive adoption across teams.

Engineering Excellence & Delivery

• Lead design and review of high‑throughput microservices and event‑driven integrations (Kafka/Event Hubs), ensuring reliability, elasticity, and cost efficiency.
• Champion cloud‑native architectures on AWS/Azure, container orchestration with Docker/Kubernetes, and service reliability practices (SLOs, error budgets, incident response).
• Establish observability standards (metrics, logs, traces) and operational readiness, integrating with platform telemetry and dashboards.

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Enforce API and data security (OAuth2, JWT), role‑based access control, and compliance‑by‑design across services and data products.
• Drive consistent data governance for platform‑exposed datasets, collaborating with Data Engineering on lineage, quality, and stewardship.

Cross‑Functional Leadership

• Partner with Data Engineering, product, and manufacturing domain experts to align service design with digital‑twin/Omniverse and analytics use cases; ensure performance for low‑latency scenarios (e.g., predictive maintenance, dynamic scheduling).
• Mentor Lead/Senior engineers; uplift teams in API design, microservices, DevOps automation, and platform reliability practices.
• Evaluate and guide tool/vendor choices (API gateways/management, observability stack) and codify best practices across the organization.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 14–18+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time in platform, integration, or large‑scale distributed systems roles.
• Deep expertise in API development (REST, gRPC, GraphQL) and microservices architecture; hands‑on with event streaming (Kafka/Event Hubs).
• Strong proficiency with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD at scale.
• Demonstrated leadership in security‑first designs (OAuth2/JWT, RBAC) and observability (metrics/logs/traces) for production platforms.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management; ability to influence architecture and execution across multiple teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with API management platforms and developer portals; strong documentation and governance discipline.
• Familiarity with data virtualization/semantic layers for enterprise analytics and self‑service consumption.
• Hands‑on exposure to OpenUSD/Omniverse integrations as downstream consumers of platform services (for digital‑twin and simulation scenarios).
• Working knowledge of Industry 4.0 data and integration patterns across MES/SCADA/PLM/ERP ecosystems relevant to manufacturing platforms.
• Contributions to open‑source projects or publications in platform engineering, large‑scale APIs, or industrial digital platforms.

Posting Dates:

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply

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