Principal Software Engineer, GO Payments

This specific opening sits on the Payments team, which owns the payment and transaction-processing systems that power every license, registration, and reservation purchase across our platforms - the infrastructure that turns a campsite booking, a fishing license, or a boat registration into funded conservation work. As Principal Software Engineer, you set the architecture and technical standards for this domain, partnering directly with the Chief Engineer on how those standards extend to the other teams building on top of it.

This role is reserved for advanced, high-caliber engineers - the kind who don’t need close oversight to do their best work, and who know it without needing to say it. Engineers on our IC track are expected to bring strength that travels: while this role is anchored on Payments today, you’re built for range, not a lane, and you may be asked to contribute across Licensing, Registrations, Reservations, or emerging initiatives as business needs shift, picking up new domains quickly rather than needing years to ramp on one narrow system.

And you care about the mission. The systems you build here don’t just move money - they get people outdoors and fund the conservation work that keeps those spaces open. That’s not incidental to the payments work; it’s the point.

The Role

This is our principal individual contributor role, for engineers who want to stay close to the code while working at the highest technical level we have. You’re not here to manage a team or own anyone’s headcount; we have dedicated Engineering Managers and Tech Leads for that. You’re here to write and design the hardest, highest-leverage systems yourself, and to set the architecture and technical standards the rest of engineering builds on.

That means systems thinking is part of the job, not a nice-to-have: you step back from the immediate task and ask what the broader pattern is, especially since your work spans multiple product domains. You don’t need a fully-specified spec to start making real progress on the right problem; ambiguity is where this role begins, not where it stalls.

You’ll take ambiguous, cross-cutting problems and turn them into shipped, production-grade systems, with the judgment to know when to move fast, when to slow down, and when a pattern you’re building should become a capability the rest of the org can use. That same judgment extends to the tools you use: you lean on AI to move faster, and you know exactly where to trust its output and where to verify it yourself.

None of this runs through formal authority. You’ll set technical direction and raise the bar for engineers you don’t manage, including Tech Leads and other senior engineers, by writing standards clear and well-reasoned enough that people adopt them because they’re right, not because you outrank anyone., * Lead the design, development, and delivery of complex technical solutions that meet functional, performance, and security requirements

• Translate ambiguous business and product requirements into a clear technical plan and execute against it
• Write high-quality, maintainable, testable code, and take ownership of the most complex or critical components on your team
• Conduct code reviews and design reviews as a peer contributor, raising the bar through your own standard of work rather than through formal management
• Collaborate across product, architecture, QA, and DevOps to ensure end-to-end delivery quality
• Advocate for engineering best practices, coding standards, and strong CI/CD discipline
• Identify and resolve technical risks and dependencies early in the development lifecycle
• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies and tools, including AI-assisted development, to drive modernization and efficiency
• Move across product domains (Licensing, Registrations, Reservations, and beyond) as business priorities shift
• Mentor senior and staff-level engineers directly, without a formal reporting line, raising the technical bar through review and example
• Design, build, and maintain secure, PCI-compliant payment and transaction-processing systems that power license, registration, and reservation purchases across our agency partners
• Integrate with third-party payment gateways and processors, ensuring transaction integrity, accurate reconciliation, and resilience at scale
• Partner with compliance and product stakeholders to navigate payment-industry regulations and security standards (e.g., PCI DSS) as the platform evolves

• Strong foundation in C# and .NET
• Front-end experience with Angular, React, or Blazor
• RESTful APIs, microservices, and cloud platforms (Azure, AWS)
• Relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and ORMs (e.g., Entity Framework)
• DevOps practices and tools (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps)
• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including experience setting technical direction across multiple teams
• Nice to have: containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), contributions to open-source projects or technical blogs
• Extensive experience in the fintech space is required for this opening, specifically hands-on work building or maintaining payment and transaction-processing software
• Familiarity with payment gateways/processors, PCI DSS, and transaction reconciliation is a strong plus

The selected candidate should have the skills, qualifications, and experience consistent with a Principal level within Brandt’s job architecture. The compensation range is $150,000 - $170,000, with final level and salary determined based on the candidate’s expertise, qualifications, and prior experience within the applicable pay band.

• Health insurance, with some plans fully covered for the employee (family members can be added at a discounted rate)
• Vision insurance fully covered for the employee (family members can be added at a discounted rate)
• Dental insurance available for purchase
• Flexible/open paid time off (PTO) policy (available after 30 days of continuous service)
• Nine (9) paid holidays
• 401(k) plan with matching company contributions
• Annual year-end performance bonuses
• Up to 8 weeks of paid parental leave
• Life insurance fully covered by the company
• Long-term disability insurance fully covered by the company
• Free Udemy account for ongoing professional development and learning