Principal Software Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Washington DC

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

CVS Health Digital is looking for hands-on, passionate people who want to join a high energy and growing team to make a difference in customers’ lives and who want to be on the forefront of digital innovation that aims to reinvent what a pharmacy and a health care company can be in the digital world. Currently, we are hiring for a Principal Software Engineer, who will define and drive the technical direction for the organization and will work with high visibility enterprise teams to develop and execute Enterprise Solution Strategy for mobile. Operating as both a senior individual contributor and technical leader, you will partner closely with product, architecture, and engineering leadership to make pragmatic, high-impact design decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.

The Principal Software Engineer will remain hands-on with critical-path systems while mentoring senior and staff engineers and translating prototypes into scalable into production-grade platforms. You will establish clear expectations for reliability, security, performance, and operability, ensuring strong engineering fundamentals—such as testing, observability, and CI/CD—are embedded from day one. Through technical leadership, collaboration, and example, you will elevate engineering quality, accelerate delivery, and foster a culture of craftsmanship, learning, and continuous improvement.

Expectations For the Role

Architect (40 % of Time):

Establish and ensure adherence to technical direction, standards, guidelines, and methodology for use of specified technologies in the department. Then lead the Technical Advisory council that performs application architectural reviews on department initiatives. Partner with teams and serve as subject matter expert to provide benchmarked solutions to multiple, complex technical projects/initiatives within own area of expertise and organize cross-departmental application architectural solutions. Influence technical standards and tool selection for the entire company. Vendor technology evaluation and influence. Work with external development firms to evaluate the strength of their platforms as candidates for selection to be added to CVS' environment. Influence the vendors' technical direction to align with those of CVS. Architect for backward/forward compatibility and insulation from the shortcomings of vendor software.

Visionary & Strategist (10% of Time):

Develop and improve strategic technical direction for functional areas. Maintain the departmental strategic multi-year roadmap and author new additions to it. Align with the Enterprise technology roadmap and extend it to include technology useful to the Specialty department. Use quantitative measures to guide architectural priorities. Engage senior technical and business leaders in the development of the technical roadmap then present the results. Keep abreast of technological trends in the industry and determine if useful and/or feasible (i.e. financial impact) and make recommendations to the organization. Build the business case for new tools and drive the funding process. Then lead Proof of Concept (POC) initiatives to evaluate technologies. When new technologies/techniques are selected, then manage the integration, cultural adoption, and transition.

Standard Setter (5% of Time):

Lead matrixed application Technical Leads in the development and implementation of application standards through all parts of the Specialty Dispensing architectural stack. Facilitate experts in a variety of disciplines: Swift, SwiftUI, Java, Kotlin, Public & Private Cloud, Rules Engines, Open Source & Proprietary frameworks, etc. to work on how methodologies and standards will be defined.

Technical Program Leader (40% of Time):

Act as the most senior technical contributor on strategic initiatives. During some periods leading (e.g. defining sensible sets of functionalities to be grouped into projects of a multi-year program) and other times supporting (e.g. providing application architectural designs with the Technical Lead on the project). Be deeply personally engaged in the success of this program.

Process Development and Adoption (5% of Time):

Identifies necessary process changes for the department and methodically implements them. Leads the department's DevSecOps maturity journey. Progresses the Unit and QA Test Automation processes in collaboration with the Quality Assurance organization to “shift left”. Selects and implements the tooling for the Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment pipeline across all technology stacks (i.e. Angular, Java, Oracle). Surveys other departments, enterprise initiatives, and the industry for best practices for the department to adopt.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of hands-on information technology experience in systems analysis, application design, application development, and application program development
• 7+ years of development experience in the following languages: Java, Swift, Swift UI, Kotlin
• 5+ years of experience in design and evolve scalable, modular mobile architectures (e.g., MVVM, Clean Architecture), handle complex app lifecycles, and make long-term technical decisions across both platforms
• 5+ years of experience in managing stakeholder’s requirements, and technical solutions
• 3+ years of experience working on CI/CD Pipeline automation
• 3+ years of experience in setting engineering standards, mentor senior engineers, collaborate with product/design, and influence mobile strategy at an org-wide level
• 1+ years of software development experience within AI technologies, particularly Generative AI and Large Language Models and familiarity with AI/ML frameworks and libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn)
• 1+ years of experience with Flutter
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives and influence engineering direction without relying on formal authority

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience working with multiple foundation model providers and a clear point of view on when to use each
• Experience designing or integrating AI or generative AI solutions, including APIs, models, or platforms
• Hands-on working knowledge of JavaScript, AngularJS, and/or NodeJS
• Experience building MCP servers and defining tool integrations for agent ecosystems
• AI evaluation tooling experience (LangSmith, Braintrust, Promptfoo, or custom evaluation harnesses)
• Hands-on experience using AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) as production build tools, not just IDE assistants
• Experience in the health, wellness, or pharmacy domain
• Contributions to open-source projects, published technical content, or patented innovations
• Full-stack development experience, including APIs, data stores, and cloud services

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience (HS diploma + 4 years relevant experience)

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

Bring your heart to CVS Health Every one of us at CVS Health shares a single, clear purpose: Bringing our heart to every moment of your health. This purpose guides our commitment to deliver enhanced human-centric health care for a rapidly changing world. Anchored in our brand — with heart at its center — our purpose sends a personal message that how we deliver our services is just as important as what we deliver. Our Heart At Work Behaviors™ support this purpose. We want everyone who works at CVS Health to feel empowered by the role they play in transforming our culture and accelerating our ability to innovate and deliver solutions to make health care more personal, convenient and affordable. We strive to promote and sustain a culture of diversity, inclusion and belonging every day. CVS Health is an affirmative action employer, and is an equal opportunity employer, as are the physician-owned businesses for which CVS Health provides management services. We do not discriminate in recruiting, hiring, promotion, or any other personnel action based on race, ethnicity, color, national origin, sex/gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. We proudly support and encourage people with military experience (active, veterans, reservists and National Guard) as well as military spouses to apply for CVS Health job opportunities.

Pay Range

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. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program.

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families.

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.

Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on: 09/25/2026

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.