Principal Staff Software Engineer - Systems and Infrastructure

Principal Staff Software Engineer - Systems and Infrastructure

This role will be based in Mountain View, CA, or Bellevue, WA.

At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

As part of our world-class software engineering team, you will take the lead in building the next-generation infrastructure and platforms for LinkedIn, including but not limited to: service delivery platform, scalable data storage infrastructure, graph infrastructure, analytics platform, streams processing and data pipelines, cutting-edge search platform, best-in-class AI/ML infrastructure, Kubernetes compute infrastructure, media infrastructure, etc. You will work and learn among the best, putting to use your passion for distributed technologies and algorithms, API design and systems design, and your passion for writing code that performs at massive scale. LinkedIn has pioneered many well-known open-source infrastructure projects including Apache Kafka, Pinot, Azkaban, Samza, Venice, Datahub, Feather, etc. We also work with industry standard open source infrastructure technologies like Kubernetes, GRPC and GraphQL - come join our infrastructure teams and share the knowledge with a broader community while making a real impact within our company.

As a Principal Staff Software Engineer, you will be a key technical leader and role model within the organization. We are looking for a technical lead who designs and develops technology to serve business and technology objectives, aligns points of view across teams and makes trade offs to help achieve the goals of individual teams as well as LinkedIn's broader goals. You will foster LinkedIn's culture and values around transformation, collaboration and results. You will work closely with technical leadership and management within and outside our organization to contribute to building best-in-class core systems infrastructure for LinkedIn.

• Deliver impact by driving innovation while building and shipping software at scale
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to up-level the engineering organization
• Actively improve the level of craftsmanship at LinkedIn by developing best practices and defining best strategies
• Design products/services/tools and code that can be used by others while upholding operational impact of all decisions
• Functioning as the tech-lead for multiple key initiatives, identify problems and opportunities and lead teams to architect, design, implement and operationalize systems
• Partner closely with teams within the org and customers to execute on the vision for long-term success of our core infrastructure teams
• Working closely with the open-source community to participate and influence cutting edge open-source projects.
• Keep a platform first approach while designing products/service

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 10+ years of industry experience in software design, development, and algorithm related solutions.
• 5+ years in experience as an architect, or technical leadership position.
• Experience in developing and scaling large scale databases or analytics systems
• Experience with coding in Java, C++, or Rust; knowledge of query execution, indexing, and concurrency.
• Hands on experience developing distributed systems, large-scale systems, databases and/or Backend APIs

Preferred Qualifications

• MS/PhD in Computer Science or related field.
• Experience in architecting, building, and running large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience with industry, open source, and/or academic research in technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Kubernetes, Feather, GraphQL, GRPC, Apache Kafka, Pinot, Samza or Venice.
• Experience with open-source project management and governance.
• Experience building interactive services or analytics APIs for large-scale systems.
• Experience with communication and ability to influence cross-functional teams.
• Background in industry thought leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to align technical decisions with business outcomes and drive customer-centric innovation.

Suggested Skills:

• Distributed Systems Design
• Real-time analytics platforms
• Load Balancing
• Kubernetes
• Deep understanding of concurrency, distributed algorithms, and data structures.

Additional Information

We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels.

LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.

The pay range for this role is $226,000 to $369,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.

The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit

Equal Opportunity Statement

We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.

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