Principal Software Development Engineer (m/w/d)

Job Description

NextEra Analytics offers energy consulting services using industry-leading scientific analysis for planning, siting, forecasting and optimizing all forms of energy projects. Our optimization and analytics platforms integrate open-source technologies to leverage massive, diverse sets of utility operating data. This enables rapid development of operational solutions. Applying expertise in advanced mathematics, data and physical sciences, we solve some of the hardest problems facing the energy industry.

We are seeking a high-caliber Principal Software Development Engineer to help build customer-centric software solutions that drive business impact. This role is designed for an exceptional engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strong product intuition and business acumen.

As a Principal Software Development Engineer, you will thrive in ambiguous environments, rapidly prototype solutions with stakeholders, and design scalable, secure, and resilient systems. You will operate with a high degree of autonomy, serving as the technical bridge between business objectives and software delivery while mentoring engineering teams and raising technical standards across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering & System Design

• Architect scalable, maintainable solutions for complex and loosely defined business problems while proactively identifying edge cases and technical risks.
• Partner directly with stakeholders to rapidly prototype and validate ideas, accelerating product discovery and feedback.
• Own the full software development lifecycle across backend services, APIs, data platforms, and user interfaces.
• Make pragmatic technology decisions that balance speed, quality, maintainability, and long-term scalability.
• Champion modern software architecture patterns and engineering best practices.

AI-Enabled Engineering Productivity

• Leverage agentic AI tools throughout the software development lifecycle to improve engineering velocity while maintaining full ownership of code quality, correctness, and security.
• Design specification-driven workflows, automated quality gates, and deterministic validation processes that improve AI-assisted software development.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and development practices, adopting solutions that improve team productivity and engineering outcomes.
• Promote responsible AI usage by establishing standards for reliability, maintainability, and governance.

Reliability, Security & DevSecOps

• Embed security, compliance, and privacy considerations into every stage of software development.
• Build highly reliable, scalable, and maintainable applications supported by comprehensive automated testing.
• Design and maintain modern CI/CD pipelines that enable safe, repeatable, and efficient software delivery.
• Build observability into applications through logging, metrics, monitoring, alerting, dashboards, and recovery strategies.
• Ensure production systems are measurable, debuggable, resilient, and operationally ready.

Technical Leadership & Business Ownership

• Take ownership of delivering high-impact business outcomes while proactively managing scope, priorities, dependencies, and technical risks.
• Partner closely with Product Managers, architects, and business leaders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Clearly communicate architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and technical recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborate early with Security, Risk, Compliance, Infrastructure, and Platform Engineering teams to deliver secure and sustainable solutions.
• Influence engineering direction through technical leadership, mentorship, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Team & Culture

• Foster a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Lead by example through strong ownership, accountability, and sound engineering judgment.
• Mentor engineers and elevate technical standards across the organization.
• Promote an environment of trust, autonomy, and shared responsibility while aligning engineering decisions with customer and business goals.

Qualifications

Required

• Extensive experience designing and building large-scale distributed software systems.
• Expertise across modern software architecture, cloud platforms, APIs, databases, and full-stack application development.
• Strong experience with modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, DevSecOps, and observability.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives from concept through production.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical and business stakeholders.
• Proven ability to work effectively in ambiguous, fast-paced environments while delivering measurable business outcomes.

Preferred

• Experience building AI-enabled applications and integrating large language models (LLMs) into production systems.
• Experience designing platforms that leverage agentic AI workflows and developer productivity tools.
• Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes, microservices, and event-driven systems.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing engineering strategy across multiple teams.

Job Overview

This position provides technical software project leadership including, but not limited to defining system architecture, guiding design of the system's software and writing code as part of the implementation team and mentors less experienced team members. Employees in this role work with the product team to plan work and typically serve as Technical Lead of projects. Individuals in this position provide technical advice to higher levels in the organization.

Job Duties & Responsibilities

• Codes in multiple languages in support of software products and the development of software products
• Leads software system architecture projects
• Mentors others in efficient software design
• Leads project-level sized teams including assigning work, answering technical project questions, helping other software engineers overcome challenges and mentoring less experienced software engineers
• Communicates with varying levels within and outside the organization including clearly reporting status in meetings and in other forums, describing systems to audiences of all technical abilities, communicating task assignments to team members, refining requirements and helping to facilitate project planning with the product team, assisting with software project demos and reporting results
• Provides input on software and technology decisions across an entire project and potentially participates in higher level meetings concerning software and IT architecture
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience
• Experience: 9+ years

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's - Engineering

The estimated base pay for this position is $149,600.00 to $224,400.00 per year. Starting pay will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, experience, qualifications, job-related and industry knowledge and skills and education/training.

NextEra Energy offers a wide range of benefits to support our employees and their eligible family members. Click here to learn more.

Employee Group: Exempt
Employee Type: Full Time
Job Category: Science, Research, and Technology
Organization: NextEra Analytics, Inc
Relocation Provided: Yes, if applicable

NextEra Energy is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, color, age, national origin, religion, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetics, disability, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by law.

NextEra Energy provides reasonable accommodation in its application and selection process for qualified individuals, including accommodations related to compliance with conditional job offer requirements, consistent with federal, state, and local laws. Supporting medical or religious documentation will be required where applicable and permitted by applicable law. To request a reasonable accommodation, please send an e-mail to [email protected], providing your name, telephone number and the best time for us to reach you.

NextEra Energy will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information.

NextEra Energy does not accept any unsolicited resumes or referrals from any third-party recruiting firms or agencies. Please see our policy for more information.