Principal Software Engineer

Principal Engineer

CaptivateIQ is transitioning from a single-product company to a multi-product, interconnected modeling platform — where every enterprise business model running on CIQ compounds the value of every other. Each model adds proprietary data and business logic that enrich the entire system. The platform that makes this possible serves two audiences simultaneously: enterprise customers who need fast, reliable, and trustworthy modeling experiences — and CIQ product teams who need to compose new products on shared primitives without rebuilding foundations. We're looking for a Principal Engineer who can own the platform's technical direction and ensure it delivers for both.

You'll own the technical direction across six architectural layers — Modeling, Orchestration, Identity, State Management, AI, and Frontend & Design Systems — with direct responsibility for the Platform (~25 engineers today, scaling to 35+) and technical influence across the wider engineering organization. Your architectural choices directly shape what products CaptivateIQ can ship, how fast enterprise customers go live, and how easily product teams build on the platform.

You'll be both architect and builder — setting multi-year technical strategy at the company level, making technology choices with broad organizational impact, and building alignment across engineering with clear rationale and technical vision. You'll also lead delivery of the Platform's most impactful projects, staying hands-on where it matters most. You'll be one of three Principal Engineers at CaptivateIQ — and the one responsible for the platform that powers every product.

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-year technical strategy and architectural direction for the Platform, spanning the Modeling Layer, Orchestration Layer, Trust and Compliance Layer (Identity + State Management), AI Layer, and FEDS (Frontend & Design Systems).
• Make technology choices with org-wide impact where the right answer is ambiguous or contested — and build alignment across engineering with clear rationale and technical vision.
• Drive architectural coherence across 7+ Platform teams, ensuring that independently-built systems compose into a unified platform with consistent contracts, APIs, and quality standards — and a developer experience that makes adoption easy for product teams. Serve as a technical leader with influence across the wider engineering organization.
• Lead the delivery of the Platform's most impactful projects as a hands-on technical leader, with equal attention to end-customer experience and internal developer ergonomics.
• Partner with senior EPD leadership to connect platform investments to business outcomes — tying architectural choices to customer time-to-value, product velocity, and enterprise readiness.
• Invest deeply in coaching Staff and Senior engineers toward greater strategic scope and organizational impact.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in platform engineering and distributed systems at scale — you've built foundational infrastructure consumed by multiple product teams and driven its evolution over years.
• You've set and driven technical strategy at the org or company level — connecting technical choices to customer outcomes and business value across multiple teams and multi-year time horizons.
• You lead by influence across organizational boundaries — driving alignment between teams with competing priorities without direct authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication — you use architecture docs, strategy memos, decision records, and RFCs as everyday tools.
• You write code, lead delivery, and stay credibly technical — hands-on excellence is non-negotiable.

Strongly Preferred:

• Experience with enterprise-scale computation or modeling platforms (spreadsheet engines, formula evaluation, financial modeling, OLAP systems).
• Experience with state management abstractions at platform level (branching, versioning, diff/review/approve, audit).
• Deep expertise in data orchestration: ETL pipelines, workflow engines, event-driven architectures, CDC systems.
• Experience building and evolving complex platform architectures: API/SDK design, cross-cutting infrastructure, or developer platforms.
• Experience designing platform capabilities with developer experience as a first-class concern — APIs, SDKs, and integration patterns where adoption is earned through usability, not mandated.

Nice to Have:

• Experience building AI/agent platforms, integrating AI into enterprise products, or designing API-first/MCP-compatible surfaces for agent-accessible tooling.
• Experience at a B2B SaaS company during periods of significant growth or platform transformation.
• Familiarity with sales performance management, incentive compensation, EPM, or adjacent enterprise domains.
• Experience navigating the security, compliance, and architectural requirements necessary to build products for highly regulated industries (especially SOX and HIPAA).

Notice to Prospective Candidates

Only emails from @captivateiq.com should be trusted.

We are aware of active recruitment scams using the CaptivateIQ name, in which individuals pose as our recruiters and post fake remote job openings and make fake job offers on the Internet.

Please note, we will never do the following:

• Attempt to correspond with a candidate using a free web-based account, such as an email address that ends in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc.
• Make an offer of employment without conducting multiple rounds of interviews face-to-face using secure video-conferencing technology.
• Ask candidates to cash checks to buy equipment on behalf of CaptivateIQ.
• Ask candidates to make a payment in order to be considered for a position.
• Make early requests for candidates' personal information such as date of birth, passport details, credit card numbers, bank details and social security number, etc.
• Please note that we'll only ask for more sensitive personal information in connection with background checks after an offer is made.
• Participate in an on-call rotation to provide after-hours support, ensuring timely resolution of critical issues and maintaining system uptime.