Principal I Software Engineer

Powering the agentic revolution in travel. Sabre is an AI-native technology leader, backed by one of the world’s largest travel data clouds. Built on an open, modular, cloud-native architecture, Sabre serves as the backbone for both established leaders and bold, new disruptors, guiding them to the next age of travel retailing through intelligent, connected, and personalized experiences. With AI at its core and operating at unparalleled scale, Sabre transforms insights into innovation, empowering airlines, hoteliers, agencies and other partners to retail, distribute and fulfill travel worldwide.

Principal Software Engineer – Cloud, GenAI, Agentic AI & Enterprise Orchestration Platforms

Role Summary

We are seeking an exceptional Principal Software Engineer to provide technical vision, architectural leadership, and hands-on engineering expertise across cloud-native platforms, enterprise applications, and next-generation AI solutions.

This role is responsible for driving large-scale platform modernization, enterprise architecture, AI/ML adoption, Generative AI enablement, and Agentic AI workflows. The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in PHP, Java Spring Boot, Cloud Engineering, Distributed Systems, and AI-powered platforms with a proven track record of influencing engineering strategy across multiple teams and business domains.

As a Principal Engineer, you will act as a technical leader, mentor, and trusted advisor, shaping the future-state architecture and engineering practices while enabling innovation through GenAI and intelligent automation.

Key Responsibilities

Technical & Strategic Leadership

Define and drive technical vision, architecture, and engineering strategy across multiple products and platforms.

Lead cross-functional initiatives spanning application modernization, cloud transformation, platform engineering, and AI adoption.

Serve as a technical authority for complex architecture and design decisions.

Establish engineering standards, development frameworks, and best practices across teams.

Mentor Senior Engineers, Technical Leads, and Engineering Managers.

Influence technology roadmaps aligned with business and organizational goals.

Enterprise Architecture & Modernization

Architect and lead the evolution of enterprise applications using PHP, Java Spring Boot, Microservices, and Cloud-Native architectures.

Drive modernization programs including:

Monolith to Microservices transformations

Legacy platform modernization

Cloud migration and transformation

Platform consolidation initiatives

Create scalable reference architectures and reusable engineering patterns.

Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies that improve business outcomes and engineering productivity.

AI/ML, GenAI & Intelligent Platforms

Lead design and implementation of AI-enabled enterprise applications and intelligent automation platforms.

Architect and develop solutions leveraging:

Large Language Models (LLMs)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Prompt Engineering

Vector Databases

Semantic Search

AI Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Design and implement Agentic AI workflows capable of autonomous task orchestration, reasoning, planning, and tool utilization.

Partner with Data Science and AI teams to operationalize ML models at scale.

Define AI governance, security, responsible AI practices, and monitoring frameworks.

Evaluate AI platforms including Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Anthropic Claude, and enterprise AI ecosystems.

Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering and developer productivity tools.

Cloud & Platform Engineering

Define enterprise cloud architecture across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

Lead platform engineering initiatives that improve developer experience and deployment efficiency.

Drive Infrastructure-as-Code, GitOps, and automation strategies.

Lead implementation of:

Docker

Kubernetes

Service Mesh

API Gateway

Event-Driven Architectures

Optimize scalability, resilience, security, and cloud cost management across platforms.

Reliability, Security & Operational Excellence

Establish enterprise standards for:

Security

Reliability

Availability

Performance

Observability

Drive implementation of monitoring, distributed tracing, logging, and AIOps capabilities.

Lead architecture reviews, risk assessments, and system resiliency programs.

Partner with Security and Compliance teams to embed secure-by-design principles.

Collaboration & Executive Influence

Collaborate with Product, Architecture, Security, Data Science, Platform Engineering, and Business Leadership teams.

Translate strategic business objectives into scalable technology solutions.

Present technical strategies, architecture recommendations, and investment proposals to senior leadership.

Influence engineering culture, innovation, and organizational technical direction.

Required Technical Skills

Software Engineering

Expert-level experience in PHP (Laravel/Symfony).

Strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot.

Proven experience architecting large-scale enterprise systems.

Deep understanding of:

Object-Oriented Design

Domain-Driven Design (DDD)

Design Patterns

SOLID Principles

Distributed Systems

Strong experience designing REST APIs, GraphQL, and service-oriented architectures.

Hands-on experience with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and modern UI integration patterns.

Cloud & Platform Technologies

Deep expertise in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

Strong experience with:

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD Pipelines

Infrastructure-as-Code

Platform Engineering

Experience with cloud security, identity management, and zero-trust architectures.

Knowledge of service mesh and modern cloud networking architectures.

AI/ML & GenAI

Experience building and scaling AI-powered applications in production environments.

Strong understanding of:

Machine Learning lifecycle

MLOps

Generative AI architectures

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Prompt Engineering

Embedding Models

Vector Databases

Knowledge Graphs

Experience with:

Azure OpenAI

OpenAI APIs

AWS Bedrock

Google Vertex AI

LangChain

Semantic Kernel

LlamaIndex

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

Experience building AI Agent and Agentic Workflow solutions with tool integration and orchestration capabilities.

Data & Integration

Advanced SQL expertise in PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or SQL Server.

Experience with NoSQL databases including MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra, or Cosmos DB.

Experience with:

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Event Streaming Platforms

Event-Driven Architecture

Strong understanding of data governance and data security practices.

Engineering Excellence

Enterprise-scale architecture leadership.

High-availability and mission-critical systems design.

Secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC).

Observability, AIOps, and operational excellence.

Scalability and performance optimization.

Engineering governance and architecture review processes.

Agile, DevOps, and Platform Engineering practices.

Experience & Qualifications

12–18+ years of software engineering experience.

Proven experience as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Chief Architect, or Enterprise Architect.

Demonstrated success leading enterprise-wide technology transformation programs.

Experience influencing architecture and engineering decisions across multiple teams and business units.

Strong mentoring and technical leadership experience.

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, or related field.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience leading enterprise GenAI, AI Agent, or Intelligent Automation initiatives.

Experience building AI Centers of Excellence (AI CoE) or platform engineering organizations.

Expertise in AI governance, Responsible AI, and AI security.

Experience with digital transformation programs in:

Airlines & Airports

Banking & Financial Services

Telecommunications

Retail & E-commerce

Logistics & Supply Chain

Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP).

AI/ML certifications and advanced architecture certifications.

Experience working with executive leadership and enterprise architecture boards.

What Success Looks Like

Enterprise-wide adoption of scalable cloud-native and AI-powered platforms.

Successful delivery of GenAI and Agentic AI capabilities that improve business outcomes and productivity.

Accelerated modernization of legacy systems and applications.

Consistent architecture standards and engineering excellence across teams.

Measurable improvements in reliability, security, scalability, and operational efficiency.

Strong technical mentorship and development of future engineering leaders.

Recognized as a trusted technical leader driving innovation and business transformation.

We will give careful consideration to your application and review your details against the position criteria. You will receive separate notification as your application progresses.

Please note that only candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role will proceed in the selection process.