Principal Engineer - Front/Back-End Development, APEX, Azure, CI/CD & AI/Cloud

Syneos Health® is a leading fully-integrated life sciences services organization built to accelerate customer success. We partner with innovators at every point across the drug development and commercialization continuum, helping them navigate complexity, anticipate change and accelerate progress.
 
Every day we perform better because of how we work together, as one team, each the best at what we do. We bring together talented experts across a broad spectrum of business critical corporate functions. Every role plays an essential part in enabling our customers to achieve their goals. Our teams are agile, collaborative, and committed to delivering—for each other, for our customers, and ultimately for the people who rely on the services we support.
Discover what your 25,000 future colleagues already know:
 
Why Syneos Health
• We are passionate about developing our people, through career development and progression; supportive and engaged line management; technical and therapeutic area training; peer recognition and total rewards program.
• We are committed to building an inclusive culture – where you can authentically be yourself. Central to this is our purpose – Driven to Deliver – which captures the passion of our colleagues to show up each day and shape solutions that have the ability to dramatically impact someone’s life. 
• We are continuously building the company we all want to work for and our customers want to work with. Why? Because we know that when we bring together smart colleagues from across the world, we can shape the future of healthcare, driving impact for customers and defining the pace of patient progress. 

Job Responsibilities

Job Summary

The Principal Engineer provides senior technical leadership and management for software engineering teams responsible for designing, developing, and delivering scalable, secure, and AI-enabled business solutions. This role combines engineering management, solution architecture, and hands-on technical expertise to drive the successful delivery of cloud-native applications and modern software platforms.

The Principal Engineer partners with business stakeholders, product owners, architects, and engineering teams to define technical strategy, translate business requirements into scalable solutions, and ensure the successful execution of complex initiatives. This role is responsible for leading software development teams, guiding architectural decisions, establishing engineering best practices, and fostering a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.

The ideal candidate brings strong experience in modern software development, cloud-native architectures, AI-enabled solutions, engineering leadership, and delivery execution across Azure, AWS, and other cloud platforms, with preferred experience in Microsoft Azure technologies.

Core Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop software engineers while fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Manage engineering resources, workload planning, and delivery commitments across multiple projects and initiatives.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices, development standards, code quality expectations, and technical governance processes.
• Collaborate with project managers, product owners, architects, and business stakeholders to ensure successful project execution and delivery.

Architecture & Solution Design

• Lead technical discovery sessions and partner with stakeholders to gather, analyze, and refine business and technical requirements.
• Own architectural decisions and provide technical leadership throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Design and document scalable, secure, and maintainable cloud-native solutions using modern engineering patterns and best practices.
• Develop architecture diagrams, technical roadmaps, and solution documentation to support decision-making, implementation, and operational support.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend innovative approaches that drive business value and operational efficiency.

Software Engineering & Delivery

• Lead software development teams in the delivery of AI-first, production-ready enterprise and client solutions.
• Participate as a hands-on technical contributor for complex implementation efforts, proof-of-concepts, and critical engineering initiatives.
• Design and implement APIs, event-driven systems, microservices, cloud-native applications, and platform integrations.
• Ensure solutions are designed for scalability, resiliency, security, maintainability, and operational excellence.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automated testing, and DevSecOps methodologies.

AI & Modern Engineering

• Champion the adoption of AI-enabled software development practices and emerging technologies.
• Leverage generative AI, agentic systems, and intelligent automation to improve developer productivity and business outcomes.
• Lead the development and implementation of AI-powered solutions, testing strategies, and automation frameworks.
• Partner with engineering and business teams to identify opportunities for AI innovation and practical application.

Client & Stakeholder Engagement

• Engage directly with stakeholders to understand business objectives, address technical challenges, and provide strategic guidance.
• Facilitate discussions across technical and non-technical audiences to align priorities and communicate complex concepts effectively.
• Support workshops, solution reviews, architecture presentations, and technical demonstrations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; equivalent experience will be considered.
• 5+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership responsibilities.
• Experience managing and mentoring software engineering teams and driving delivery outcomes.
• Strong experience designing and delivering cloud-native applications using Microsoft Azure, AWS, or comparable cloud platforms.
• Preferred experience with Microsoft Azure Servless, PaaS services including App Services, Azure Functions, Container Apps, Azure OpenAI, Azure SQL, GitHub Actions, Azure Key Vault, and related cloud-native capabilities.
• Experience developing modern web applications using technologies such as Python, Node.js, TypeScript, C#, React, Next.js, or similar frameworks.
• Strong understanding of software architecture principles, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native design patterns.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases including PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, Cosmos DB, DynamoDB, or similar technologies.
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, Pulumi, or similar), and DevOps practices.
• Experience integrating applications, platforms, and third-party systems through APIs and cloud services.
• Familiarity with Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Agentic AI solutions (e.g.: LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK), AI-assisted development, and modern automation practices.
• Excellent problem-solving, decision-making, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Proven ability to lead technical workstreams while remaining an effective hands-on contributor.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams in consulting, professional services, or customer-facing environments.
• Experience building AI-enabled or AI-native software solutions.
• Experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, machine learning platforms, or intelligent automation technologies.
• Experience with modern testing frameworks, automated quality assurance, performance testing, and observability platforms.
• Experience working in regulated or highly governed enterprise environments.
• Azure, AWS, or related cloud certifications.
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Get to know Syneos Health

Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs, 95% of EMA Authorized Products and over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.

No matter what your role is, you’ll take the initiative and challenge the status quo with us in a highly competitive and ever-changing environment. Learn more about Syneos Health.
 

http://www.syneoshealth.com

Additional Information

Tasks, duties, and responsibilities as listed in this job description are not exhaustive.  The Company, at its sole discretion and with no prior notice, may assign other tasks, duties, and job responsibilities. Equivalent experience, skills, and/or education will also be considered so qualifications of incumbents may differ from those listed in the Job Description. The Company, at its sole discretion, will determine what constitutes as equivalent to the qualifications described above.   Further, nothing contained herein should be construed to create an employment contract.  Occasionally, required skills/experiences for jobs are expressed in brief terms. Any language contained herein is intended to fully comply with all obligations imposed by the legislation of each country in which it operates, including the implementation of the EU Equality Directive, in relation to the recruitment and employment of its employees.  The Company is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the provision of reasonable accommodations, when appropriate, to assist employees or applicants to perform the essential functions of the job.