Principal Software Engineer (Location Services)

Cotality is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive work culture that inspires innovation and bold thinking; it's a place where you can collaborate, feel valued, develop skills and directly impact the real estate economy. The Principal Engineer operates with broad scope and influence, partnering closely with engineering leaders, product teams, and stakeholders to align technical outcomes with business priorities.

At Cotality, we are driven by a single mission-to make the property industry faster, smarter, and more people-centric. Cotality is the trusted source for property intelligence, with unmatched precision, depth, breadth, and insights across the entire ecosystem. Our talented team of 5,000 employees globally uses our network, scale, connectivity and technology to drive the largest asset class in the world. Join us as we work toward our vision of fueling a thriving global property ecosystem and a more resilient society.

Cotality is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive work culture that inspires innovation and bold thinking; it's a place where you can collaborate, feel valued, develop skills and directly impact the real estate economy. We know our people are our greatest asset. At Cotality, you can be yourself, lift people up and make an impact. By putting clients first and continuously innovating, we're working together to set the pace for unlocking new possibilities that better serve the property industry.

Job Description:

Role Overview

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to provide technical leadership for our Location Services team. This role is responsible for shaping architecture, driving cross-team technical strategy, and ensuring the scalability, correctness, and operational excellence of location-based systems across the company.

The Principal Engineer operates with broad scope and influence, partnering closely with engineering leaders, product teams, and stakeholders to align technical outcomes with business priorities.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own and evolve the architecture of core Location Services and geospatial capabilities
  
• Lead system design for highly scalable, low-latency, and highly available location-based services
  
• Define standards and best practices for geospatial data modeling, querying, and processing
  
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies, patterns, and frameworks where they provide material benefit
  

Platform Ownership & Delivery

• Serve as technical owner for critical geospatial components and services
  
• Guide teams through complex technical initiatives spanning multiple services or domains
  
• Ensure solutions meet requirements for performance, accuracy, reliability, and security
  
• Actively influence roadmap direction through technical insight and risk assessment
  

Cross-Team Influence

• Partner with product, data, and infrastructure teams to align technical direction with business goals
  
• Provide technical insights to multiple engineering teams consuming Location Services
  
• Resolve cross-cutting technical issues and reduce architectural fragmentation
  

Operational Excellence

• Drive improvements in observability, resilience, and fault tolerance for geospatial systems
  
• Lead root-cause analysis for significant production issues and ensure long-term corrective action
  
• Champion automation, testing strategies, and reliability engineering practices
  

Mentorship & Engineering Culture

• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, strengthening overall technical capability
  
• Set a high bar for engineering rigor, system design quality, and documentation
  
• Act as a role model for pragmatic decision-making and long-term systems thinking
  

Job Qualifications:

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated senior technical leadership
  
• Deep experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems
  
• Strong expertise in geospatial concepts, such as:
  
  • Spatial data models and indexing
    
  • Geospatial queries, transformations, and projections
    
  • Location accuracy, precision, and data quality considerations
    
• Proficiency in one or more backend programming languages (e.g., Java, C++, Python)
  
• Experience building and operating cloud-native services (e.g., GCP, AWS, or Azure)
  
• Strong understanding of data storage technologies (relational, NoSQL, time-series, or geospatial databases)
  
• Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams without direct authority
  
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to diverse audiences
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior ownership of location-based or geospatial platforms in production environments
  
• Experience w