Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer who can operate across multiple modes of work: platform modernization, iterative product development, and high-ambition greenfield exploration. This is a hands-on role for someone who can define strategy, deliver complex systems, and raise the technical bar for the teams around them.

• Deliver outcomes
  • Partner with engineering teams to co-deliver complex work across platform modernization, product evolution, and new product bets.
  • Adapt your technical approach, planning style, and delivery strategy to match the needs of the work.
  • Use AI-native development methods to build automation, validation, and engineering harnesses that improve speed, quality, and leverage.
• Define and drive technical strategy
  • Lead technical strategy across large, multi-team initiatives with long-term impact.
  • Define and evolve system boundaries across complex domains, with a focus on clean interfaces and scalability.
  • Identify and remove bottlenecks in performance, data flow, reliability, and architecture.
  • Lead exploration, prototyping, and validation for ambiguous technical problems.
  • Partner with cross-functional peers on disaster recovery planning, testing, and optimization.
• Design AI-driven systems
  • Design systems that enable autonomous or semi-autonomous engineering workflows.
  • Build context-aware infrastructure that connects code, documentation, and systems to AI tooling.
  • Develop guardrails such as validation layers, static analysis, and automation hooks to ensure safe and reliable AI-assisted development.
  • Improve how AI is used across the organization for both effectiveness and efficiency.
• Influence and lead
  • Raise the technical bar by helping teams think bigger and execute better.
  • Mentor and challenge Staff+ engineers to expand their scope, judgment, and impact.
  • Partner with engineering and product leadership to align technical decisions with business outcomes.
  • Create durable artifacts such as runbooks, decision logs, and tests that can be handed off and evolved by others.
  • Contribute across product domains, bringing context from one area to solve problems in another.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling complex software systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field; or 6+ years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 4+ years of experience; or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience using AI as a primary development collaborator, with a strong quality bar for AI-generated output.

Requirements

• Proven success leading large, cross-pillar technical initiatives.
• Track record of working effectively across platform modernization, iterative product development, and greenfield delivery.
• Strong architectural judgment across distributed systems, APIs, and platform design.
• Ability to operate as a force multiplier for other engineers.
• Experience improving engineering testing standards through approaches such as TDD, BDD, load testing, stress testing, chaos testing, invariant testing, or mutation testing.
• Experience building infrastructure that improves engineering velocity and quality at scale.
• Strong background in distributed systems and platform architecture.
• Experience inferring behavioral specifications from existing systems through code, tests, logs, and subject-matter experts.
• Ability to deliver production-quality outcomes in a small, time-boxed team setting.
• Strong written communication skills and a habit of creating durable, useful artifacts.
• A leadership style that empowers others rather than creating dependency.

Benefits

• Salary range in the US: $177,000.00 - $284,000.00
• A discretionary bonus typically paid annually
• Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire
• 401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package