Consulting/Principal Software Engineer *** Hybrid in Raleigh, NC

About the Business

LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 11,800 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. Our company has been a long-time leader in deploying AI and advanced technologies to the legal market to improve productivity and transform the overall business and practice of law, deploying ethical and powerful generative AI solutions with a flexible, multi-model approach that prioritizes using the best model from today’s top model creators for each individual legal use case.

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced and skilled Principal Engineer to join our cross-functional team of data scientists and software engineers. In this role, you will design, develop, and maintain high-quality software applications using Python as the primary programming language. You will drive the design, development, and operationalization of scalable, robust solutions—working closely with data scientists and engineers to deliver high-impact features for our customers. This hands-on leadership role which also involves technical mentoring, architectural decision-making, and team guidance throughout the full application lifecycle. This position includes direct reports.

Responsibilities

• Guide the technical vision and strategy, making high-level architectural decisions.
• Provide technical expertise and contribute to corporate strategy and technology recommendations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into scalable software solutions.
• Design and implement complex, fault-tolerant software systems, adhering to best practices in software architecture, coding standards, and design patterns.
• Develop and maintain Python-based applications, libraries, and microservices using modern frameworks and tools.
• Participate in code reviews to ensure quality, maintainability, and consistency.
• Mentor and guide junior developers and data scientists, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• Implement automated testing strategies to ensure code reliability and performance.
• Stay current with emerging trends, technologies, and best practices in the Python ecosystem.
• Represent the engineering team in technical discussions and decision-making processes.
• Resolve complex technical issues and serve as an escalation point for development problems.
• Design and manage complex data models and data workflows.
• Carry out management responsibilities, including interviewing, hiring, training, performance evaluation, and conflict resolution.
• Promote accountability, innovation, and ownership among team members.
• Architect and optimize data storage and retrieval systems (structured and unstructured, e.g., S3).
• Build and integrate vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS) and search technologies (e.g., Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch).
• Design and deploy messaging systems (e.g., AWS SNS) for asynchronous and streaming workloads.
• Monitor system and application health in real time to ensure uptime and performance.
• Implement and manage access control mechanisms (IAM, OAuth2, RBAC, Vault, or AWS Secrets Manager).
• Act as a liaison between software engineering, data science, and DevOps teams.
• Standardize workflows and tools across research , dev, and production environments.
• Contribute to sprint planning, architectural design sessions, backlog grooming, and post-mortems.
• Design and implement caching strategies and low-latency data access layers to accelerate model inference and data APIs.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Several years of professional software development experience, with a strong emphasis on Python.
• Extensive experience with frameworks such as Django, Flask, or FastAPI.
• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and scalable AI systems.
• Proficiency in relational and non-relational databases, including ORM frameworks like SQLAlchemy.
• Expertise in Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Experience designing APIs and data-driven systems.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and version control (Git).
• Experience leading projects and mentoring teams.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills.
• Experience working with cache and in-memory databases (e.g., Redis, Memcached).
• Familiarity with observability stacks (EFK/ELK, Prometheus, Datadog, Grafana) and distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry).
• Experience with messaging systems (AWS SNS, Kafka).
• Solid understanding of IAM, RBAC, and secrets management.
• Proficiency in integrating LangChain or similar frameworks for modular AI workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Working knowledge of Google ADK
• Experience with Agile, Scrum, or Kanban methodologies.
• Understanding of LLMs, ML pipelines, and model deployment.
• Knowledge of additional programming languages (e.g., Go, Java).

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organization. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

About the Business

LexisNexis Legal & Professional® provides legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services.

We know your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. We are delighted to offer country specific benefits. Click here to access benefits specific to your location.

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We are an equal opportunity employer: qualified applicants are considered for and treated during employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, protected veteran status, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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