Principal Software Engineer

As a Principal Software Engineer at HERE Technologies, you will help shape the future architecture of the mapmaking platform, driving large-scale modernization initiatives and creating scalable platform capabilities. You will operate at the intersection of software engineering, architecture, and technical leadership, designing platform APIs and shared data contracts. The role offers opportunities to influence engineering direction across multiple teams and work with cloud-native technologies on AWS.

• Drive the evolution of HERE’s mapmaking ecosystem from legacy technologies toward a unified, topology-based cloud platform.
• Lead the modernization and consolidation of mapmaking architectures into a scalable platform that supports current and future products.
• Design and influence platform architecture, APIs, shared data contracts, and interoperability standards across engineering domains.
• Create reusable platform capabilities that improve engineering productivity, consistency, and speed of delivery.
• Simplify end-to-end workflows by reducing platform complexity and improving data quality, governance, transparency, and certification.
• Guide the design and development of secure, reliable, and highly scalable distributed systems using modern cloud-native technologies.
• Champion engineering excellence through Agile development, DevOps practices, CI/CD automation, and operational best practices.
• Influence technical strategy and collaborate with engineering managers, architects, product leaders, and stakeholders across the organization.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, continuous learning, and technical excellence.

• Experience designing and evolving distributed systems that manage highly connected datasets at very large scale, where query performance, consistency, and reliability are critical.
• Experience applying version-control concepts such as branching, commits, conflict resolution, and rollback to large-scale, non-code data assets.
• Experience building or operating rule-based validation and quality frameworks that treat data-correctness checks similarly to automated test suites.
• Experience leading migrations from legacy monolithic or relational architectures, including stored-procedure-heavy database environments, to modern distributed and cloud-native data platforms.
• Experience working with geospatial data structures and algorithms, including topology, spatial indexing, spatial joins, and large-scale geometry processing.
• Deep understanding of APIs, system integration, data contracts, and event-driven architectures that enable interoperability across multiple teams and platforms.
• Experience influencing technical strategy and building alignment across engineering organizations and stakeholders.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical challenges into clear engineering and business outcomes.
• Hands-on experience with big-data processing frameworks and table formats that support time travel or versioned datasets on AWS or comparable cloud platforms.
• Java 21 or later, Scala, or Python.
• Apache Spark, Apache Sedona, Apache Iceberg, or comparable technologies.
• AWS services such as Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, and Amazon EMR.
• Data lakes, GIS, geometry processing, distributed systems, and highly scalable data platforms.

• Challenging and meaningful technical problems with global impact.
• Opportunities to influence strategic platform decisions and engineering direction.
• Collaboration with experienced engineers, architects, product leaders, and technology specialists.
• A culture that supports continuous learning, innovation, professional development, and career growth.
• Flexible ways of working that support work-life balance.
• Regular feedback and opportunities to expand your technical leadership.
• An inclusive and collaborative environment in which diverse perspectives are valued.
• The opportunity to build technology used by millions of people every day.