Principal Engineer API Platform

About the role

We're building a world of health around every individual - shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health, we are building a developer platform that sets the standard for how hundreds of engineers across Retail, Pharmacy, Health Solutions, and Aetna design, build, secure, and publish APIs.

As a Principal Engineer on this platform, you will own the technical direction and architecture across several teams building these capabilities. This is a senior, cross-cutting role with significant organizational influence. You will establish the engineering practices that teams build on, define how APIs are designed and governed at scale, and lead the effort to embed AI-powered capabilities into the developer experience itself.

Responsibilities

• API Design, Architecture & Governance: define and enforce standards for REST, GraphQL, event-driven, and MCP-based interfaces across the enterprise
• Security & Compliance: approach API security as a first-class architectural concern, with hands-on expertise in OAuth 2.0, OIDC, mTLS, scopes, rate limiting, and threat modeling for APIs
• AI-Powered Developer Experience: lead the design and delivery of AI capabilities embedded into the developer platform, including AI-powered coding skills and assistants that guide engineers toward CVS-compliant API patterns
• Technical Leadership & Platform Thinking: articulate a clear technical vision, rally engineers across multiple teams around it, and stay close enough to execution to keep quality high
• Engineering Craft: write clean, well-tested, production-grade code in JavaScript/TypeScript (Node.js, React) and Java/Spring Boot, and hold the teams you work with to the same standard

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a meaningful portion spent designing and delivering APIs at enterprise scale
• 5+ years of direct experience with API security, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, mTLS, rate limiting, and API threat modeling
• 5+ years working with API gateway products and API management platforms (e.g., Apigee, Kong, Azure APIM, or equivalent)
• 5+ years of backend development in Java/Spring Boot and/or Node.js
• 5+ years working with large public cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure), including the networking and identity primitives that underpin secure API delivery

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience influencing technical direction across multiple teams in a principal, staff, or architect-level capacity
• 3+ years partnering with product management, architecture, and program management to shape roadmaps and deliver complex platform capabilities
• Experience building or operating an API catalog, developer portal, or internal developer platform
• Experience with GraphQL schema design and federation at scale
• Experience with mature CI/CD practices, source control, automated testing, and contract-first API development

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building AI-powered developer tooling, including LLM-integrated coding assistants, MCP servers, or AI-assisted API design workflows
• Experience working with agent-to-agent (A2A) integration patterns or MCP-based tooling
• Experience with healthcare data standards and APIs, including FHIR, HL7, and CMS interoperability requirements
• Experience designing and operating event-driven APIs using Kafka or comparable streaming platforms
• Strong written communication skills, particularly in technical design documents and architecture decision records (ADRs)

Pay

The typical pay range for this role is $144,200.00 - $288,400.00. This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls.

Benefits

This full-time position is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial well-being of colleagues and their families. The benefits for this position include medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and other resources, based on eligibility.