Principal Software Engineer
Description
Ministry Brands is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our growing team!
Who we are
Ministry Brands is a leading provider of SaaS operational management systems, payments platforms, digital engagement tools and background screening solutions for faith-based, non-profit and for-profit organizations. We serve more than 95,000 customers as a trusted partner in digital transformation and enablement – advancing missions, driving efficiencies, and building engaged communities for more than four decades. The diverse and real-world experiences of our team members serving their communities makes us stronger together and enhances our ability to advance digital transformation for the greater good.
Ministry Brands is committed to acknowledging and valuing our employee differences and to creating an environment in which every individual’s unique strengths and abilities are developed and valued. Our employees share in the responsibility for creating this environment and demonstrate mutual respect and acceptance in the workplace. We welcome everyone and are dedicated to creating a culture where all our employees have equal opportunity to be heard and reach their full potential.
Available Location: Milton, GA
Hybrid Working: Team members are expected to come into the Alpharetta office as needed, based on business requirements and team collaboration needs. There is no fixed minimum number of in-office days; instead, attendance will be determined by project demands, meetings, and manager guidance. Any changes to your primary work location should follow the appropriate process as outlined in our handbook.
What You'll Do:
As a Principal Software Engineer , you will serve as one of the organization's most senior technical leaders, responsible for defining the long-term technical vision and architecture of our background screening platform. You will drive engineering excellence across multiple teams, influence product strategy through technology, and ensure our software solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable.
You will partner closely with Product Management, Engineering Leadership, Security, Architecture, and DevOps to solve complex business problems while mentoring engineers and establishing engineering best practices.
This role combines deep hands-on software engineering with technical leadership, architectural decision-making, and cross-functional influence.
Key Responsibilities:
Technical Leadership
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Define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and engineering standards across multiple applications and services.
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Lead the design of scalable, secure, cloud-native solutions using modern PHP/LAMP technologies and AWS.
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Make architectural decisions that improve performance, reliability, maintainability, scalability, and security.
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Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption strategies that improve engineering effectiveness and business outcomes.
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Serve as the highest level technical escalation point for complex engineering challenges.
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Drive technical roadmaps that align engineering investments with business objectives.
Software Engineering
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Design, develop, and maintain enterprise-grade applications using PHP, modern PHP frameworks, Linux, Apache/Nginx, MySQL, JavaScript, and related web technologies.
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Lead modernization initiatives including application refactoring, cloud migration, monolith decomposition, framework upgrades, and technical debt reduction.
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Develop highly available cloud applications utilizing AWS services including EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, ElastiCache, SQS, SNS, CloudFront, and related AWS technologies.
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Optimize database performance through schema design, indexing strategies, query optimization, caching, and database architecture.
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Develop highly testable, maintainable, and reusable software components.
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Ensure software solutions meet performance, reliability, compliance, and security requirements.
Engineering Excellence
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Champion engineering best practices including clean architecture, SOLID principles, Domain-Driven Design, API-first development, and secure coding standards.
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Establish and improve development standards, coding guidelines, testing strategies, and deployment processes.
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Lead architecture reviews, code reviews, design reviews, and technical planning sessions.
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Drive improvements in automated testing, observability, monitoring, and application performance.
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Guide CI/CD strategy utilizing modern CI/CD platforms and Git-based development workflows.
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Continuously improve build and release pipelines to increase deployment reliability and speed.
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Promote Infrastructure as Code and automated AWS infrastructure provisioning using technologies such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or AWS CDK.
Cross-Functional Leadership
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Partner with Product Management to translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions.
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Collaborate with Engineering Managers to prioritize technical investments and platform improvements.
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Influence technical decisions across multiple engineering teams.
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Communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
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Balance short-term delivery with long-term architectural sustainability.
Mentorship & Talent Development
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Mentor senior, mid-level, and junior engineers through coaching, code reviews, pair programming, and architecture guidance.
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Foster a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, ownership, and continuous learning.
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Help establish career development paths and technical competency standards.
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Lead technical knowledge sharing through presentations, documentation, and architecture discussions.
Operational Excellence
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Lead incident response and root cause analysis for critical production issues.
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Improve platform observability, monitoring, alerting, and operational readiness.
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Ensure applications meet reliability, scalability, security, and availability goals.
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Promote automation across development, deployment, testing, and infrastructure.
Who You Are:
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Passionate about software engineering and building technology that supports purpose-driven organizations.
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Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
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10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
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5+ years designing enterprise-scale distributed systems and cloud-native applications.
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Ability to use flowcharts, sequence diagrams, architecture diagrams, and other documentation tools.
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Demonstrated experience serving as a technical lead, staff engineer, principal engineer, or software architect.
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Expert-level proficiency with:
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PHP
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Modern PHP frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony
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Linux
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Apache and/or Nginx
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MySQL / Amazon Aurora MySQL
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HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
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RESTful APIs and web services
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Extensive experience designing cloud-native applications in AWS.
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Deep expertise with AWS services including EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, ElastiCache, SQS, SNS, CloudFront, IAM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, and related AWS services.
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Strong experience with containerized application development and deployment using Docker and AWS ECS/EKS or similar technologies.
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Strong experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices.
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Advanced knowledge of Git workflows and version control strategies.
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Experience designing RESTful APIs, service-oriented architectures, and distributed systems.
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Strong understanding of application security, authentication, authorization, IAM, encryption, secrets management, and secure coding practices.
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Experience designing highly available, fault-tolerant, horizontally scalable systems.
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Expertise with automated testing including unit, integration, API, and end-to-end testing.
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Strong understanding of software design patterns and architectural principles.
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Experience with caching, asynchronous processing, queues, and event-driv