Career Area:

Engineering

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other.  We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Role Summary
We’re seeking aPrincipalSoftwareEngineer to build and evolve large-scale, distributed systems that power mission-critical platforms. This is a senior technical leadership role forengineers who thrive on solving hard, ambiguous problems at scale, and who can influence architecture across teams.
You will drive system design, scalability, andengineering excellence, while remaining deeply hands-on in building high-performance backend systems on a modern cloud-native stack.
What You’ll Do

• Architect and buildhigh-throughput, low-latency distributed systems usingJavaand microservices
• Leadend-to-end system design across services, data, and platform layers
• Design forscale, resilience, fault tolerance, and operability from first principles
• Build and operatecontainerized workloads on Kubernetes (multi-service, production scale)
• Define and raise the bar onarchitecture, APIs, andengineering quality standards
• Drivecross-team technical decisions and resolve complex system bottlenecks
• Mentor seniorengineers and act as atechnical multiplier across teams
• Influenceplatform roadmap, modernization, and developer productivity

Basic Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building and operating backend systems at scale
• Strong expertise inJava, Spring Boot, Microservices, Distributed Systems
• Proven experience designinghighly available, large-scale systems (traffic, data, or compute)
• Hands-on withKubernetes and Docker in production environments
• Strong fundamentals insystem design, concurrency, data modeling, and performance optimization
• Deep experience withPostgreSQL or similar databases

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience withevent-driven architectures (Kafka / streaming systems)
• Exposure tocloud platforms (AWS/Azure) and hybrid architectures
• Experience withobservability, reliabilityengineering, and production operations
• Contributions toplatformengineering, frameworks, or internal developer platforms
• Track record ofinfluencing architecture across multiple teams or product

Tech Stack
Java | Spring Boot | Microservices | Kubernetes | Docker | PostgreSQL | CI/CD | Cloud (AWS/Azure)

Posting Dates:

July 2, 2026 - July 15, 2026

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply

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