Principal Software Engineer

About Fleet Management

Our 30-year journey rides on the passion of over 27,000 seafarers and 1,000 onshore professionals. Today, we are one of the largest independent third-party ship management companies managing over 650+ diverse types of vessels.

Headquartered in Hong Kong SAR, China, we operate on a global scale having 27 offices in 12 countries. Our client base spans over 100 world-class ship owners, including Fortune 500 companies from China, Greece, India, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the USA, among others.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

As a Principal Software Engineer, your typical day includes:

Set the Vision: Architecture & Strategy

Define and evolve the technical architecture for the PARIS ecosystem, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance across services

Drive technology selection, standardisation, and modernisation across the engineering organisation

Partner with product and business leaders to align architectural decisions with long-term product and organisational goals

Lead design reviews and establish best practices for distributed, event-driven, and microservice architectures

Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies, including AI, machine learning, and data analytics, to enhance system intelligence and user experience

Technical Leadership & Innovation

Mentor and coach senior and mid-level engineers, fostering technical excellence and a culture of ownership

Serve as the technical authority for large-scale system design, complex problem resolution, and performance optimisation

Spearhead cross-team initiatives in DevOps, observability, and automation, driving efficiency and resilience

Champion engineering quality through robust design patterns, testability, and maintainable code structures

Collaborate with infrastructure and cloud teams to optimise cost, performance, and security

Execution & Delivery

Oversee delivery by doing design and code reviews regularly and ensuring development cells meets the standards and best practices we have set for the organisation

Ensure system observability, scalability, and performance through proactive monitoring and architectural improvements

Lead technical risk assessments, capacity planning, and incident response strategies

Contribute hands-on to critical development when necessary setting the bar for technical execution

Job Experience, Functional Knowledge and Qualifications

Indicate the minimum and preferred education and experience for this job and any licenses and certifications required.

Essential - You must have this experience

10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a technical leadership or principal-level role.

Proven expertise in full-stack development using modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Node.js, TypeScript) and backend services

Strong architectural experience in distributed systems, microservices, APIs, and event-driven architectures

Deep proficiency with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including cost optimisation, CI/CD, and deployment best practices, and disaster recovery / high-availability design.

Strong understanding of relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB) including backup, replication, and recovery strategies

Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence technical direction across teams

Strong problem-solving and analytical capabilities in high-scale, secure production environments

Hands-on knowledge of applying Generative AI understanding in day-to-day software development .

Desirable - It would be great if you also have

Experience designing or operating Serverless architectures, Kubernetes, and containerised deployments.

Exposure to enterprise-grade system design, including high-availability, observability, and fault tolerance.

Contributions to open-source projects or internal developer platforms.

Experience in the maritime, logistics, or IoT domains is a strong plus.

Experience leading Agile development at scale (Scrum or Kanban)