Principal software engineer Jobs in USA

THE JOB

You'll work across a mature C/C++ codebase spanning three decades — from pre-standard patterns in our core authorization gateway to C++17 in our Bazel monorepo. The immediate work is maintenance and strategic modernization of these systems, but this role is explicitly designed to grow: from legacy renovation into systems design, gRPC service architecture, and new technology adoption including Rust. If you're energized by the challenge of understanding why a system was built the way it was before deciding what it should become, this is the role.

This is not a maintenance job with a maintenance ceiling. You'll work on systems that power how fans pay for live events worldwide — at a scale where a misconfiguration can cause thousands of payment failures during a major onsale. The intellectual challenge is real: strategic modernization of systems spanning three decades of C++, with a clear trajectory into new technology.

There is tremendous green-field work ahead: decomposing legacy IPC into gRPC services, strengthening real-time fraud defenses during peak onsales, optimizing seamless global checkout, integrating new payment methods, and expanding embedded finance that shapes not just ticket purchases but the full in-venue experience. A strong engineer in this role will meaningfully shape the direction of these critical systems.

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING

• Maintain and strategically modernize high-throughput payment processing systems handling real financial transactions in real time

• Drive platform migration work, including migrating a core Windows C++ authorization gateway to Linux via Clang and Bazel

• Develop robust payment integrations with third-party gateways (Chase Paymentech, Barclays, HSBC, AMEX, Adyen, Braintree, Klarna, Shift4, and others)

• Decompose legacy IPC frameworks into gRPC services, enabling payment components to be reused across the broader payments ecosystem — this is the bridge from maintenance into systems design

• Implement security-critical features involving encryption, PCI compliance, and sensitive payment data handling

• Optimize performance of transaction processing pipelines where latency directly affects whether a customer completes a purchase

• Incrementally steer legacy codebases toward modern C++ practices (RAII, ownership semantics, safe string handling) without breaking the payment flows that depend on them

• Design and implement comprehensive testing including unit tests, integration tests, and fuzz testing for security-critical components

• Debug and resolve production issues in systems with complex interdependencies and real operational takes

• Collaborate with payment operations teams to onboard new payment methods and gateway providers

• Ensure compliance with PCI-DSS and other financial industry standards

• Participate in on-call rotation for production payment system support

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS)

• 7+ years of professional C++ development experience in production environments

• Modern C++ fluency

• Strong understanding of systems programming, including memory management, concurrency, and performance optimization

• Ability to reason about undefined behavior, and its practical consequences across platforms

• Systematic debugging methodology

• Toolchain understanding and cross-compilation concerns

• Proficiency with build systems — Bazel experience highly valued;

• Experience working with legacy codebases older than 10 years — ability to understand, respect, and incrementally modernize existing systems

• Experience with or strong interest in payment processing or financial transaction systems

• Deep knowledge of security best practices

• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Codex) with mature judgment — uses AI as an accelerator that requires human verification, especially in codebases with undefined behavior where AI-generated code can appear correct and still be wrong

• Understanding of HTTP/HTTPS protocols and RESTful API design

• Experience with Linux/Unix environments

• Rust experience or genuine interest in learning it

• gRPC experience or familiarity with service decomposition from monolithic architectures

• Payment gateway integration experience (Chase Paymentech, Braintree, Adyen, or similar)

• PCI-DSS compliance knowledge and implementation experience

• Experience with platform migrations (e.g., Windows to Linux, MSVC to Clang)

• Bazel build system expertise

• Performance profiling experience

• Experience with shared memory, IPC frameworks, or low-level concurrency primitives

• Kafka or other event streaming platforms experience

• OpenSSL/cryptographic libraries hands-on experience

• Familiarity with AI-powered code review and static analysis tools

• Awareness of security considerations when using AI tools with legacy or under-documented systems

YOU (BEHAVIOURAL SKILLS)

• Approaches legacy systems with respect and curiosity, recognizing the constraints and decisions that shaped them

• Takes time to understand existing systems before proposing improvements or modernization

• Continuously improves code and systems incrementally while maintaining stability

• Balances modernization efforts with the realities of production environments that require high reliability

• Demonstrates a strong security-first mindset, especially in systems handling sensitive transactions

• Understands the critical nature of payment processing and the need for accuracy, resilience, and uptime

• Navigates complex systems with care, ensuring minimal disruption while driving improvements

• Shows enthusiasm for evolving legacy systems into modern, scalable solution

• Systems thinker who can reason across layers — from compiler optimization to cache behavior to network latency to business impact

• Strategic modernizer who understands incremental improvement over wholesale rewrite and can articulate when to pay down technical debt versus when to live with it

• Security-conscious developer who treats buffer safety, memory safety, and integer correctness as default concerns, not afterthoughts

• Pragmatic problem solver who can work within the constraints of legacy systems while steadily steering them forward

• Growth-oriented engineer who starts in maintenance but is motivated to grow into systems design, gRPC service architecture, and broader payments ecosystem work

• Collaborative communicator who explains reasoning clearly, asks good clarifying questions, and engages as a peer — can disagree constructively and change their mind when presented with new information

• Detail-oriented professional who understands the operational stakes of financial transaction processing

• Systems thinker able to reason across layers—from low-level performance (compiler optimization, cache behavior, network latency) to overall business impact

• Strategic modernizer who prioritizes incremental improvements and can balance technical debt decisions pragmatically

• Security-conscious developer who treats memory safety, buffer handling, and data integrity as foundational principles

• Pragmatic problem solver who works effectively within legacy system constraints while steadily driving improvements

• Growth-oriented engineer motivated to evolve from maintenance work into system design, service architecture, and broader ecosystem ownership

• Collaborative communicator who articulates reasoning clearly, asks thoughtful questions, and engages constructively with peers

• Open-minded professional who can challenge ideas respectfully and adapt perspective based on new information

• Detail-oriented with a strong understanding of the operational and financial impact of transaction processing systems

BENEFITS & PERKS

Through our ‘Taking Care of Our Own’ program, we provide benefits across six key pillars:

• HEALTH: Medical, vision, dental and mental health benefits for you and your family, with access to a health care concierge, and Flexible or Health Savings Accounts (FSA or HSA)

• YOURSELF: Free concert tickets, generous paid time off including paid holidays, sick time, and personal days

• WEALTH: 401(k) program with company match, stock reimbursement program

• FAMILY: New parent programs including caregiver leave, plus fertility, adoption, foster, or surrogacy support

• CAREER: Career and skill development programs with School of Live, tuition reimbursement, and student loan repayment

• OTHERS: Volunteer time off, crowdfunding match

LIFE AT TICKETMASTER

We are proud to be a part of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest live entertainment company.

Our mission at Ticketmaster is to connect people around the world to the live events they love.Ticketmaster is the world’s largest ticket marketplace and the global market leader in live event ticketing products and services. Through official partnerships with thousands of venues, artists, sports teams, festivals, performing arts centers and theaters, Ticketmaster processes 550 million tickets per year across 35+ different countries.

We do it all with an intense passion for Live and an inspiring and diverse culture driven by accessible leaders, attentive managers, and enthusiastic teams. Ifyou’repassionate about live entertainment like we are, and you want to work at a company dedicated to helping millions of fans experience it, we want to hear from you.

Our work is guided by our values:

Reliability- Fans and clients count on us to power their live eventexperiencesand we rely on each other to make it happen.

Teamwork– While we celebrate individual achievements, weknowhave more success as a team.

Integrity- We are committed to the highest moral and ethical standards on behalf of the countless partners and stakeholders werepresent.

Belonging- We are committed to building a culture in which all people can be their authentic selves, have an equal voice and opportunities to thrive.