Principal Developer - IT

United Airlines•Chicago, IL

About The Position

Achieving our goals starts with supporting yours. Grow your career, access top-tier health and wellness benefits, build lasting connections with your team and our customers, and travel the world using our extensive route network. Come join us to create what’s next. Let’s define tomorrow, together. Description Exciting opportunity to be a part of a brand-new best-in-class Customer Data & Identity Technology team. We are seeking a Principal Developer to help shape the future of our customer data, identity, and media technologies across United Airlines. This is a hands-on, individual contributor role—ideal for a builder who thrives at the intersection of data platforms, identity resolution, privacy, and digital experiences. As our Principal Developer, you’ll design and develop high-scale, distributed platforms that power personalized, data-driven engagement using AWS technologies. You’ll roll up your sleeves to code, architect, and integrate solutions that span customer data platforms (CDP), identity graphs, and audience activation—on and off our properties. You’ll bring deep expertise in privacy, universal identities, ID graph, working knowledge of Agentic AI, Vector Embedding and integrating with various digital channels. while shaping solutions that meet enterprise and regulatory standards. You’ve built packaged, reusable software products before—platforms that can be designed once and deployed at scale. You’ll apply this mindset to building cloud-native, AWS-powered systems that support customer-facing and marketing activation use cases. You understand modern DXP architectures, AI/ML solutions, and high-throughput data flows—and you know how to turn them into products that deliver business value. · Lead and be hands-on across the full software lifecycle—from shaping requirements and technical specs to driving architecture, design, and Agile delivery—powering high-scale, high-reliability customer data and identity platforms that handle millions of customer interactions seamlessly · Act as technical force multiplier - set direction, define engineering standards, guide architectural strategy, and mentor top talent—while ensuring every line of code drives innovation, scalability, and industry-leading identity solutions. Continuously review and assess legacy processes and systems, identifying opportunities for modernization, process elimination, and efficiency improvements · Ensure compliance with privacy and data governance standards, balancing innovation with trust · Create packaged, reusable components that can scale across multiple teams and products and leverage AWS and cloud-native services to optimize scalability, performance, and resilience · Explore and embed AI/ML models into platforms for smarter identity matching, activation, and customer insights. Proposing and implementing innovative solutions to complex problems · Experienced with Generative AI, RAG and GraphRAG patterns · Design models to predict next-best-action, customer behavior, and customer relations by feeding unified CDP data

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Software Engineering, Computer Science or related field
7 - 10+ years working in an Information technology solutions architect role
3 years experience working in customer identity management role
Deep expertise in Customer Data Platforms (CDP), Identity Resolution, Identity Graphs, Digital Identifiers, and Privacy
Strong understanding of audience activation, universal identities
Advanced knowledge of AWS cloud services and relevant technologies for system integration and enhancement.
Proficiency in relevant programming languages and technologies (Java/Python/.NET)
Proficiency in modern software engineering Deep expertise in Customer Data Platforms (CDP), Identity Resolution, Identity Graphs, Digital Identifiers, and Privacy
Advanced knowledge of AWS cloud services and relevant technologies for system integration and enhancement.
Proficient in understanding Stateful / Stateless model with Batch, Real time and Hybrid approach in Cache – CDP model
Proficiency in modern software engineering practices, architecture patterns, and integrations
Hands-on coding expertise across relevant languages, frameworks, and cloud stacks
Understanding of digital experience platforms and experiencing in integrating data-driven personalization
Experience designing and scaling solutions on AWS cloud-native products
Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship; reliable, punctual attendance required

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering preferred
Experience in Airline or similar industry to understand booking, order, loyalty concepts
Expertise with AWS – Neptune Graph Db, Cloud ETL, Streams and event driven architecture
Familiarity with AI/ML-driven applications and how they transform customer engagement
Familiar with Graph query language like gremlin / cypher

Responsibilities

Lead and be hands-on across the full software lifecycle—from shaping requirements and technical specs to driving architecture, design, and Agile delivery—powering high-scale, high-reliability customer data and identity platforms that handle millions of customer interactions seamlessly
Act as technical force multiplier - set direction, define engineering standards, guide architectural strategy, and mentor top talent—while ensuring every line of code drives innovation, scalability, and industry-leading identity solutions. Continuously review and assess legacy processes and systems, identifying opportunities for modernization, process elimination, and efficiency improvements
Ensure compliance with privacy and data governance standards, balancing innovation with trust
Create packaged, reusable components that can scale across multiple teams and products and leverage AWS and cloud-native services to optimize scalability, performance, and resilience
Explore and embed AI/ML models into platforms for smarter identity matching, activation, and customer insights. Proposing and implementing innovative solutions to complex problems
Experienced with Generative AI, RAG and GraphRAG patterns
Design models to predict next-best-action, customer behavior, and customer relations by feeding unified CDP data