Principal Software Engineer

@ Morgan Stanley

Overview

The Principal Software Engineer role at Morgan Stanley emphasizes both technical excellence and leadership. In this dual-impact role, you will guide a group of developers, build sustainable engineering practices, and shape strategic architectural directions.

Key Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end line management including coaching, performance assessment, and compensation input.
• Design individualized skill development plans for long-term capability mapping.
• Drive retention through growth opportunities, psychological safety, and career pathing.
• Mentor and sponsor for accelerated team growth.
• Hire for complementary skills and shape an effective competency mix.
• Act as a hands-on lead developer by designing, prototyping, reviewing, debugging, and enforcing quality standards.
• Establish and maintain high engineering quality including testing, documentation, and security hygiene.
• Provide architectural steering for initiatives such as monorepo strategy and internal developer tooling.
• Engage in exploratory prototyping and manage invisible sustaining work like refactoring and test hardening.

Strategic & Cross-Fleet Impact

• Represent engineering in high-level planning by connecting product intent with technical feasibility.
• Balance BAU delivery with continual upskilling and negotiate time allocations to manage technical debt.
• Identify and address systemic issues spanning multiple teams.
• Make timely decisions with clarity and follow-up communications.

Coaching & Enablement

• Provide hands-on training such as code walkthroughs, deep dives, and pairing sessions.
• Curate learning paths tied to future strategic capability needs (e.g., monorepo workflows, secure-by-design practices).
• Implement measurable learning to convert upskilling into observable competency shifts.

Experience & Skills

• 10+ years of professional software development with sustained hands-on track record.
• Proven experience managing software engineers including performance management and hiring.
• Expertise in setting and enforcing pragmatic quality standards.
• Strong stakeholder negotiation skills to balance product timelines and skill growth investments.
• Experience with internal developer platforms and modern engineering tooling such as Terraform and CDK.
• Exposure to large-scale repository strategies and regulated environments.

What You'll Get

• High visibility to shape technical caliber and team practices.
• The opportunity to both build software and build people.
• Influence over strategic architectural decisions.
• A culture focused on thoughtful risk-taking, continuous learning, and transparency.

Our Values

Morgan Stanley values include putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back. These principles shape everyday decisions and foster a supportive, inclusive work environment.

Additional Information

This role may require specific regulatory qualifications. Flexible work arrangements are available; please speak to our recruitment team for details.

Key skills/competency

• leadership
• coaching
• mentoring
• architecture
• quality
• strategic
• development
• innovation
• debug
• collaboration