Principal Engineer

Role Description

The Principal Engineer is a senior individual contributor role within the PetDesk CarePath organization, reporting directly to the Chief of Staff / CarePath Partnership Lead. This position provides technical leadership for the CarePath Loyalty product initiative, partnering closely with Engineering, Product, Operations, and business stakeholders — including third-party drug manufacturers, corporate clinic groups, and individual veterinary clinics — to shape the architecture, scalability, and long-term technical strategy of a rapidly growing platform.

The Principal Engineer will:

• Lead complex technical initiatives and drive key architectural decisions.
• Bring operational awareness and project management experience.
• Identify operational efficiencies and contribute to product roadmap discussions.
• Ensure that the technical direction of the platform supports customer and partner goals.
• Balance strategic thinking with pragmatic execution.
• Operate at a systems architecture level and engage in hands-on initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with at least 3 years operating at a Staff or Principal Engineer level or equivalent technical leadership capacity.
• Deep expertise designing and operating distributed systems, integration platforms, APIs, and data-intensive applications at scale.
• Demonstrated experience building and supporting complex third-party integrations, preferably within healthcare, veterinary technology, fintech, SaaS, or similarly interconnected ecosystems.
• Strong understanding of system architecture, event-driven design, data modeling, and modern cloud-native application development.
• Demonstrated project management experience — ability to plan, track, and drive complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and stakeholders without formal PM authority or certification required.
• Proven operational awareness — experience identifying inefficiencies in technical workflows or business processes and working cross-functionally to implement meaningful improvements.
• Experience serving as a technical point of contact for external customers, partners, or vendors.
• Proven ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and drive alignment without formal authority.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business impact for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience evaluating architectural tradeoffs and making pragmatic decisions that balance short-term business needs with long-term scalability.
• Strong proficiency in modern programming languages and cloud platforms, with the ability to contribute hands-on when needed.
• Self-directed and highly collaborative with a builder's mindset, strong business acumen, and a genuine passion for solving complex problems that impact real customers.

Requirements

• Lead the technical vision, architecture, and long-term engineering strategy for the CarePath Loyalty platform.
• Assist with the design and evolve a platform capable of supporting integrations across dozens of third-party systems.
• Participate to architect data pipelines, APIs, and services that enable seamless data exchange.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Operations to translate market opportunities into scalable technical solutions.
• Drive architectural decisions that balance speed, flexibility, maintainability, and long-term platform health.
• Identify and drive operational efficiencies across the platform.
• Oversee the end-to-end technical execution of key initiatives.
• Serve as a technical point of contact for external stakeholders.
• Participate with architecture reviews and provide project-level oversight for complex initiatives.
• Identify and mitigate technical risks associated with third-party integrations.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends related to integrations, data platforms, APIs, and distributed systems.

Benefits

• $164,000 - $180,000 a year.
• PetDesk combines user-friendly client engagement tools with a highly-rated pet parent app.