Principal Software Engineer

Principal / Staff Software Engineer Oakland, CA — Hybrid (3 days/week onsite) Salary: Up to $375,000 + bonus Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship The Opportunity We’re partnering with a profitable, rapidly growing platform at the intersection of healthcare, education, and AI. This is a rare opportunity to join as a founding-level engineer alongside a newly appointed CTO, shaping the next generation of intelligent systems in a high-impact, data-rich environment. The product is already widely adopted by physicians across the U.S., with a strong network effect and a multi-sided marketplace connecting medical professionals, content creators, and enterprise partners. The next phase focuses on AI-driven intelligence, personalization, and workflow automation at scale . Why This Role Exists A new CTO has just joined and is building out a small, elite engineering team from the ground up. This is the first senior IC hire , with significant influence over architecture, technical direction, and product innovation. You’ll operate in a true 0→1 to 1→N environment : Early stage: rapid prototyping, experimentation, and validation Scaling phase: productionizing systems and collaborating with a distributed team This is an evergreen mandate to hire exceptional engineers (multiple hires planned) — the bar is extremely high. What You’ll Do This is a deeply hands-on role with full ownership across the stack: Design and build scalable systems end-to-end — from architecture to production Develop agentic AI workflows leveraging LLMs and proprietary datasets Build intelligent knowledge systems that operate on high-volume, domain-specific data Drive growth and engagement engineering , including personalization and marketing systems Partner closely with product and leadership to validate new ideas directly with users Collaborate cross-functionally and with a high-performing international engineering team Tech Stack Backend: Python, Django Frontend: React Cloud: AWS Database: PostgreSQL AI/ML: OpenAI + emerging agent frameworks What We’re Looking For Principal/Staff-level engineer with a builder mindset Proven experience owning systems end-to-end in ambiguous environments Strong backend or full-stack capabilities (Python preferred) Experience designing data-intensive or knowledge-driven systems Familiarity with LLMs, agent frameworks, or applied AI workflows Ability to move between rapid experimentation and product ionization Nice to have: Experience with healthcare or regulated datasets Exposure to growth engineering or marketing systems Why This Role Stands Out Founding engineer-level impact with direct access to the CTO Opportunity to build AI-first systems from scratch in a complex domain Already-scaled product with millions of data points — not a greenfield gamble Rare combination of profitability, scale, and technical ambition Additional Details Location: Oakland, CA (3 days onsite: Mon/Wed/Fri) If you’re interested in building high-impact AI systems in a real-world, data-rich environment — while working in a small, elite team — this is an exceptional opportunity to do so.