Senior Principal Software Engineer

We are Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS) - the trusted provider of software that enables our customers to develop, deploy and manage responsible, AI-powered applications and experiences with agility and ease. We’re proud to have a diverse, global team where we value the individual and enrich our culture by considering varied perspectives because we believe people power progress. Join us as a Software Engineer, Senior Principal in our LoadMaster engineering team and help us do what we do best: propelling business forward.

This senior individual contributor role blends deep, hands-on software development with sustained technical leadership and ownership of critical LoadMaster areas. You will act as a technical authority across complex subsystems and architectural domains while staying actively involved in design, implementation, and complex problem solving. Your focus is the ongoing evolution, performance, security, and long-term maintainability of the LoadMaster platform.

• Own engineering for critical functional and architectural areas of LoadMaster
• Design, implement, and deliver core features and platform components
• Serve as the technical authority for complex subsystems and problem areas
• Drive performance, scalability, security, and maintainability improvements
• Lead deep problem analysis and resolution across the stack
• Guide engineering requirements and architectural impact assessments
• Lead proofs of concept and prototypes to validate designs and de-risk approaches
• Provide ongoing technical guidance to globally distributed teams
• Mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering practices
• Collaborate with product, engineering leadership, and peers on roadmap and trade-offs
• Champion high-quality code, reviews, and continuous improvement
• Contribute to cross-team standards, tooling, and automation

• Extensive experience delivering complex, high-performance Linux systems
• Expert C systems programming with a focus on low-latency TCP/IP networking
• Deep knowledge of Linux internals: networking stack, memory, kernel–userspace
• Proven performance engineering: profiling, bottleneck analysis, optimization
• Strong security background: threat modeling, cryptography, secure design
• Advanced Bash and Linux tooling for automation and diagnostics
• Solid understanding of CPU, memory, NUMA, and I/O for optimization
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and leading cross-team impact

• Expertise in authentication, WAF, load balancing, proxy architectures, and TLS
• Experience with embedded Linux and hardware acceleration
• Background in distributed systems across cloud or virtualized environments
• Observability practices across complex systems