Principal Engineer [T500-29973]

About Us:

Marriott International Inc., headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, was founded in May 1927 by J. Willard Marriott and Alice S. Marriott with a modest nine-seat A&W root beer stand. Guided by the family's leadership and core principles, Marriott International today has grown into a global hospitality giant, operating approximately 10,000 properties and over 30 leading brands in more than 140 countries and territories.

From such humble beginnings to becoming the world’s largest hotel company, Marriott International has never stopped searching for inventive ways to serve its customers, provide opportunities for its associates, and grow their business. At Marriott Tech Accelerator center (MTA), Hyderabad, India, Marriott is exploring the world we live in and all its possibilities. At Marriott Tech Accelerator, we are a team of passionate engineering minds dedicated to creating and building cutting-edge solutions that streamline operations and elevate guest experiences.

Marriott Tech Accelerator is an ANSR entity incorporated exclusively for providing services to Marriott International.

Job Title – Principal Engineer

About the Role:

We are looking for a hands-on Principal Engineer to lead the architecture, design, and development of large-scale enterprise applications and Loyalty platforms. This role requires a hands-on technology leader who can drive engineering excellence, influence technical strategy, mentor senior engineers, and collaborate with product, business, and architecture teams to deliver scalable, resilient, and secure solutions. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise in Java and cloud-native technologies with strong leadership skills and a passion for solving complex business challenges. This hands-on role involves architectural work/ solution design, hands on development, deployment execution, release management and integrations with platform services and third parties as & when needed. Enforce best practices around governor limits, security model, packaging, test coverage, and release automation (as and when needed .. Partner with MI Infrastructure, Cloud, and DevOps teams to drive the adoption of enterprise DevOps strategy, architecture, best practices, and standards across the Loyalty Engineering organization. Contribute to the continuous improvement and optimization of scalable, cloud-native platforms, encompassing APIs and microservices that support customer and loyalty capabilities.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, test, and maintain backend services and APIs using Java
• Write clean, maintainable, and well documented code following best practices and coding standards
• Own high-level and low-level design (HLD/LLD) as well architecture for assigned modules/services and drive technical decision across teams;
• Design and build event-driven services and integrations (e.g., Kafka), including idempotency, message ordering, and resilient handling of unreliable upstream and downstream systems
• Establish engineering standards, best practices, and software development guidelines across teams
• Collaborate closely with architects, product managers, QA engineers, and developers to deliver features on time.
• Conduct architecture , design & Code reviews to ensure long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend innovative solutions that align with business objectives.
• Troubleshoot and debug production issues, performing root cause analysis and implementing long-term fixes
• Ensuring security, scalability, and reliability are considered throughout the development lifecycle
• Drive technical debt reduction and platform modernization efforts.
• Mentor and guide a team of engineers, fostering technical excellence, improving code quality, and driving overall team productivity beyond individual contributions.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience designing enterprise-scale applications with 2+ years in a Staff, Principal, Architect, or equivalent technical leadership role. Proven experience building high-volume, mission-critical systems.
• Strong programming skills in Java (Java 11+) with a solid understanding of OOP, concurrency, and multithreading
• Experience building server-side applications using a Java framework (e.g., Spring/Spring Boot)
• Good understanding of RESTful API design and implementation
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL) and SQL, including query optimization and schema design
• Experience with reactive, non-blocking programming (e.g., Spring WebFlux / Project Reactor); or a strong grasp of non-blocking I/O and backpressure with the ability to ramp quickly
• Experience designing and operating event-driven systems using messaging/streaming (e.g., Kafka), including delivery guarantees, idempotency, and schema evolution
• Experience integrating heterogeneous systems: resilient service-to-service and third-party integrations, with clean API and error-contract design
• Ability to reason from first principles about unfamiliar systems and tradeoffs, not just recall tools and syntax
• Familiarity with version control systems (e.g., Git) and collaborative development workflows
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, design patterns
• Experience with automated testing (unit/integration) and testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit)
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug complex issues
• Good communication skills and ability to work effectively in a team environment
• Experience with DevOps tools such as Dynatrace or Splunk.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and cloud native architectures
• Experience with DAGs, AWS S3 and Lambda
• Handson experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Deeper experience with the Kafka ecosystem: schema registry, AVRO, event schema governance, and stream processing (e.g., Kafka Streams)
• Familiarity with microservices, architecture and distributed systems
• Experience with build and CI/CD tools (e.g., Harness, GitHub Actions)
• Knowledge of NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra)
• Experience with performance optimization and application monitoring
• Experience with Airflow, Python, Harness and/or other technologies
• Experience with Jira/Confluence
• Familiarity with GraphQL and API federation.

Soft Skills:

• Well-equipped to take a leadership role to ensure quality delivery to commitments
• Ability to break down complex problems into actionable tasks
• Openness to feedback and willingness to mentor and be mentored
• Proactive, collaborative, and comfortable working in an agile environment
• Continuous learning mindset and a passion for staying up to date with the latest technologies and trends

At Marriott International, we are dedicated to being an equal opportunity employer, welcoming all and providing access to opportunity. We actively foster an environment where the unique backgrounds of our associates are valued and celebrated. Our greatest strength lies in the rich blend of culture, talent, and experiences of our associates. We are committed to non-discrimination on any protected basis, including disability, veteran status, or other basis protected by applicable law.

Work location: Hyderabad, India.

Work mode: Hybrid

Marriott’s core values:

At Marriott, our core values make us who we are. We believe that success is never final. As we change and grow, the beliefs that are most important to us stay the same—putting people first, pursuing excellence, embracing change, acting with integrity, and serving our world. Being part of Marriott Tech Accelerator means being part of a proud history and a thriving culture.