Principal Software Engineer-Native Mobile Development

About this role

About the Role

We are seeking a visionary, hands-on Principal Software Engineer to provide enterprise-wide technical leadership across the Financial Services application ecosystem, with particular depth in Spruce native mobile engineering for iOS and Android. This role will shape technical design, development practices, and engineering quality across mobile applications, backend services, cloud and on-premises infrastructure, data flows, and third-party integrations.
The Principal Engineer will guide the continued evolution from hybrid frameworks to secure, scalable native experiences using Swift and Kotlin; advance practical adoption of AI-assisted engineering through agentic workflows and development best practices; and ensure solutions align with enterprise architecture, security, reliability, accessibility, and operational standards across all applications.
Serving as a senior technical advisor, this leader will partner with Product, Design, Architecture, Security, Operations, Infrastructure, Data, and vendor teams. The role requires deep knowledge of the Financial Services portfolio and the Block enterprise architecture, sound judgment in buy-versus-build decisions, active participation in vendor and technology reviews, and a strong commitment to mentoring engineers and raising engineering capability across teams.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide technical vision and leadership across Financial Services applications, with deep ownership of the Spruce native mobile ecosystem and its integration with services, infrastructure, data platforms, and third-party providers.

• Architect and guide the development of robust, scalable, accessible, observable, and secure native mobile applications using Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.

• Define, evolve, and enforce engineering and architecture standards, including MVVM, Clean Architecture, modular design, API and integration patterns, reusable components, secure coding, performance, resiliency, and cloud-native practices.

• Ensure enterprise standards are consistently met across applications, including architecture governance, cybersecurity, privacy, regulatory and compliance expectations, accessibility, quality engineering, release management, observability, and production support readiness.

• Advance AI-enabled software delivery by establishing best practices for agentic workflows, AI-assisted design and development, specification-driven development, test generation, code review, documentation, and responsible use of enterprise-approved AI tools.

• Identify high-value AI use cases, define guardrails and reusable patterns, measure engineering outcomes, and help teams adopt AI in ways that improve quality, speed, maintainability, and developer experience without compromising security or compliance.

• Mentor engineers and technical leads through architecture reviews, design sessions, code reviews, pairing, coaching, and communities of practice; build technical depth and encourage continuous learning across teams.

• Maintain deep working knowledge of Financial Services products and applications, business capabilities, customer journeys, infrastructure, operational dependencies, data exchanges, APIs, event flows, and third-party integrations.

• Collaborate with Product, Design, Engineering, Architecture, Security, Operations, Data, and other enterprise stakeholders to translate business goals and regulatory needs into cohesive technical strategies and executable solutions.

• Participate in vendor evaluations, technology assessments, proofs of concept, contract and capability reviews, security and architecture reviews, and ongoing vendor performance discussions.

• Lead technology selection and buy-versus-build analysis using clear criteria such as strategic fit, customer experience, total cost of ownership, time to market, security, compliance, scalability, extensibility, vendor viability, integration complexity, and operational support.

• Apply a broad understanding of the Block enterprise architecture to ensure solutions align with approved platforms, shared capabilities, integration patterns, data standards, identity and access controls, infrastructure strategy, and long-term modernization objectives.

• Drive implementation and continuous improvement of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, quality gates, release automation, feature management, telemetry, performance monitoring, and production diagnostics.

• Lead complex technical investigations and resolution of cross-application issues involving mobile clients, APIs, services, infrastructure, data, identity, network dependencies, and external providers.

• Evaluate and govern third-party SDKs, APIs, platforms, and services for security, privacy, maintainability, performance, licensing, supportability, and alignment with enterprise standards.

• Influence roadmaps and investment decisions by identifying technical risks, architectural constraints, modernization opportunities, platform reuse, and sequencing considerations.

• Stay current with iOS, Android, AI engineering, financial technology, security, cloud, infrastructure, and software architecture trends; translate relevant developments into pragmatic technical direction.

• Design and oversee reusable software components, reference architectures, development accelerators, and engineering standards that improve consistency and efficiency across teams.

Leadership Competencies

• Enterprise thinking: Connects product, platform, infrastructure, data, security, and operational decisions across the full application ecosystem.

• Technical judgment: Makes pragmatic decisions that balance customer value, risk, quality, cost, speed, and long-term maintainability.

• Influence without authority: Builds alignment across engineering, architecture, product, security, operations, and vendor partners.

• Talent development: Creates leverage by mentoring engineers, strengthening technical leaders, and establishing…