Principal Software Engineer

About the role

The Revenue IT team builds and supports critical tax and revenue systems that power how the City serves residents and businesses. You’ll work across the stack—owning features end-to-end, from discovery and design through development, testing, deployment, and production support—while contributing to shared standards and modern engineering practices across OIT.

Responsibilities

• Configure and extend FAST/GenTax functionality for City-specific use cases using FAST tools and C#.
• Design, build, and maintain services, integrations, and APIs that connect Revenue IT systems with other City applications and data sources.
• Write and optimize SQL for reporting, data migration, and application features across SQL Server/Oracle/PostgreSQL environments.
• Participate in agile ceremonies; scope work with product and business partners; turn evolving requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Review code, write unit/integration tests (“if it isn’t tested, it doesn’t ship”), and monitor features after launch to ensure quality and performance.
• Support production systems—triaging incidents, debugging complex issues, and implementing fixes and follow-ups.
• Document designs, decisions, and runbooks for maintainability and knowledge sharing.
• Uphold City standards and policies—especially around data security and compliance applicable to Revenue systems.

Qualifications

• Completion of a bachelor’s degree program at an accredited college or university with major course work in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum 3 years of experience in a technical role.
• Experience in Web or software development, or design a plus.
• Experience providing technical support to a wide variety of applications a plus.
• Experience working in a large governmental, or non-profit agency is a plus; in particular, knowledge of the City of Philadelphia.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Experience developing in a .NET environment (C#), building production web applications and services.
• Proficiency with relational databases and SQL (e.g., Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL).
• Strong communication skills—you can explain technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively; strong ownership and follow-through.
• Comfort navigating incomplete requirements—asking the right questions to clarify needs and deliver solutions.
• Solid source-control habits and modern development workflows.
• Experience with FAST/GenTax configuration in government revenue/tax domains.
• API design and integration experience; familiarity with eventing, messaging, or ETL patterns.
• Background writing clear technical documentation and conducting thoughtful code reviews.
• Strong debugging methodology and comfort tracing complex, multi-system issues.

Additional Information

• Salary Range: $115,000-$123,687
• All applications must include a cover letter. Applications without a cover letter will be considered incomplete.
• For more information, go to: Human Relations Website.