Principal Software Engineer

Job Description:

Fidelity Investments’ Workplace Solutions (WS) organization is seeking a Principal Software Engineer with 10–15 years of hands-on experience in designing, developing, enhancing, and supporting enterprise-grade mainframe applications. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise across core mainframe technologies—including COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, CICS, native stored procedures, and key IBM mainframe utilities—and will support equity compensation products for global markets.

The candidate will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for driving delivery excellence, ensuring solution quality, and providing strategic and hands-on technical guidance across multiple mainframe applications and platforms. The role includes overseeing day-to-day team activities, supporting team members, managing stakeholder expectations, and representing the team in cross-functional forums. The candidate is expected to champion innovation, automation, modernization, and best practices to drive continuous improvement and operational efficiency.

The Purpose of Your Role:

Candidate will be part of a major enhancements team in the Stock Plan Services chapter in WI that coordinates equity compensation programs on behalf of public and private companies offering various compensations programs such as: Employee Stock Purchase Plans, Restricted Stock Awards/Units, Stock Option Plans, Stock Appreciation Rights and Performance based Awards.

The Skills that are Key to this role:

·       Extensive hands‑on expertise in COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, native stored procedures, MVS, Endeavor, ISPF/TSO, CICS, Control‑M, and core IBM mainframe utilities used in application development and support.

·       Must have hands on exposure to AI tools and worked in Mainframe modernization projects

·       Deep understanding of enterprise architecture, including batch processing, online transactions, and relational database design principles.

·       Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills with proven ability to interpret, debug, and enhance complex mainframe programs.

·       Excellent communication and collaboration abilities, with the capability to influence, negotiate, and partner effectively with business stakeholders and leadership.

·       Experience working in Agile and hybrid delivery models, with a solid understanding of sprint planning, backlog refinement, and iterative development practices.

·       Ability to translate business requirements into optimal, end‑to‑end technical solutions, ensuring alignment with strategic goals.

·       Skilled in analyzing production incidents, identifying root causes, and enabling permanent resolution with minimal business impact.

·       Competence in performing technical reviews, ensuring adherence to engineering standards, and providing solutions for complex system and integration issues.

·       Ability to provide hands-on technical guidance to team members throughout design, development, testing, and deployment phases.

·       Demonstrated capacity to identify skill gaps, mentor junior developers, and foster a culture of growth, learning, and engineering excellence.

·       Commitment to collaboration, knowledge sharing, and collective team ownership of deliverables and platform stability.

·       Strong focus on code quality, performance, reliability, security, and compliance, ensuring solutions align with organizational and industry standards.

Behavioral Skills:

·       Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly and effectively.

·       Strong stakeholder management capabilities, with a proven ability to engage, influence, and build trust across business and technology teams.

·       Ability to collaborate closely with business partners to understand critical requirements and work across multiple teams to drive effective, end‑to‑end solutions.

·       Demonstrated capacity to analyze and resolve complex issues quickly, leveraging independent research, technical depth, and logical reasoning.

·       A strong sense of ownership and accountability, capable of managing tasks independently while ensuring high-quality and timely delivery.

·       A collaborative team player and an effective leader, fostering a positive, productive, and high-performing team environment.

Desired Value-Add Skills:

·       Knowledge of microservices architecture and modern distributed system design principles.

·       Exposure to Core Java, J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot frameworks for integration or modernization initiatives.

·       Experience with automation tools, scripting, or DevOps enablement within mainframe environments.

·       Exposure to modernization (APIs, cloud integration, microservices support, etc.) and expertise in AI tool handling for Mainframe work

·       Familiarity with service management frameworks (ITIL, incident/change/problem management).

·       Understanding of performance tuning and capacity optimization techniques for large-scale mainframe applications.

The Skills You Bring:

·       Ability to collaborate effectively with both technical and business partners, fostering alignment and shared ownership of outcomes.

·       Advanced expertise in data‑intensive mainframe application development, data integration, and designing robust data pipeline patterns on mainframe platforms.

·       Demonstrated ability to quickly learn, adapt to, and experiment with new technologies, tools, and architectural patterns.

·       Strong commitment to modern engineering practices, including test‑driven development (TDD) and automation‑driven software development.

·       Proven experience leading teams within Agile or hybrid delivery models, ensuring clarity, focus, and high‑quality execution.

·       Strong analytical and problem‑solving capabilities with a deep understanding of mainframe architecture, system interactions, and performance considerations.

·       Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and presentation skills, enabling clear articulation of technical concepts and influencing complex decisions.

·       Ability to navigate ambiguity, establish clarity, and drive accountability across the team to achieve desired outcomes.

The Value You Deliver:

·       Maintain a strong customer‑obsessed mindset, ensuring that all technical decisions and deliverables ultimately enhance the client experience.

·       Partner closely with technical and cross‑functional teams to enable clear, simple, and technically sound design decisions that support long‑term platform stability.

·       Champion continuous improvement by proactively strengthening application quality, resilience, and operational maturity.

·       Foster a culture of openness by being candid, transparent, and solution‑oriented in all discussions to achieve the best business and technical outcomes.

·       Drive high‑quality, timely delivery across all mainframe initiatives, consistently meeting or exceeding expectations.

·       Ensure strong stakeholder satisfaction through proactive communication, collaboration, and delivery excellence.

·       Reduce defects, manual effort, and operational incidents by leveraging automation, process optimization, and engineering best practices.

·       Enable visible team growth by encouraging collaboration, continuous learning, and skill development.

·       Represent the team effectively by communicating achievements, risks, challenges, and improvement opportunities with clarity and confidence.

·       Embed innovation and continuous improvement into everyday work practices, influencing the team to adopt forward‑looking solutions and modern engineering approaches.

How Your Work Impacts the Organization:

Would be working in one of the Squads in in Fidelity Stock Plan Services (SPS) . SPS provides recordkeeping and brokerage solutions to help employers and employees manage their equity compensation plans. Through our continuous investment in innovation, focus on simplifying the customer experience, and working hard every day to protect our customers and earn their trust, we are committed to helping every employer and employee maximize the value of their equity programs. SPS is part of Workplace Investing (WI) helps our customers save and invest through workplace retirement savings plans, build lifetime relationships with customers, and provide employers with cost-effective, integrated employee benefit solutions. WI serves customers online, over the phone, and through a nationwide network of investor centers. WI is also committed to helping drive employee retirement readiness by delivering leading-edge financial solutions to employers, including recordkeeping, cash management products and services and personal advisory services (PAS).

The Expertise we’re looking for

Education and Experience:

·       Bachelor’s degree in computer science or similar subject.

·       15 years of experience in development work in Mainframe technology.

·       Financial services experience, preferably in Brokerage Domain

·       Certification in relevant technologies is preferred.

Skills/Knowledge and experience:

·       Operating Systems          : Mainframe

·       Languages                           : COBOL,CICS, JCL  (work experience is must), Good to have understanding of distributed technology.

·       Database                             : DB2, NSP, exposure to Oracle DB

·       Methodology                      : Agile & hybrid

·       Others                                   : Prior experience on large scale IT Transformational Projects ( Migration, Modernization) is plus. Hands on exposure in AI tools for analysis and requirement creation for modernization projects is a must

Location: Chennai

Shift timings: 11:00 am - 8:00pm