Principal Engineer

Principal EngineerDenver, CO; Atlanta, GAAbout ProcareFor over 30 years, Procare Solutions has been dedicated to empowering early childhood educators by providing products and services that enable them to focus on the care, safety and education of children. We recognize the responsibility that comes with nurturing and educating children, which is why our child care management solutions are designed to automate business processes, help ensure safety and compliance, communicate with families and provide educational resources and training to help teachers and children thrive.Over 40,000 satisfied customers have chosen Procare Solutions as their trusted partner in providing exceptional care for young minds.A Little About the RoleAs a Principal Engineer, you will serve as a technical visionary and a force multiplier, operating at the organizational level to ensure our technology stack scales alongside these ambitions. While our Senior Engineers focus on specific features, you will be responsible for the long-term architectural health of the entire ecosystem. You will help define and evolve our offerings toward our scaling goals, recognizing that the technical path forward is an open question. Whether parts of the platform evolve in place or warrant greenfield rewrites, that assessment—and the strategy that follows—is a core part of the role.What You'll DoData Architecture & System DesignLead our data architecture transformation — decomposing overgrown domain models, establishing clean domain boundaries, and designing schemas that perform at scale.Define query access patterns, indexing strategies, and data modeling standards that prevent the next generation of technical debt.Own the technical strategy for the platform's evolution — whether that means modernizing the current stack, rebuilding key components, or a hybrid approach.Platform & Service ArchitectureShape the broader system architecture — API design, service boundaries, integration patterns, event-driven real-time systems — with a focus on reliabilityDrive the scaling strategy from our current base to 3-5x, ensuring platform, infrastructure, and operational practices are readyPartner with product leadership when strategic decisions are made and collaborate effectively with other departmentsTechnical VisionCollaboratively set the 2-5 year technical direction, informed by where the business and the technology industry are headingEvaluate build-vs-buy decisions, investigate emerging technologiesYou understand the strengths and limitations of AI and have a strong understanding about how AI capabilities should be integrated into the engineering platform and productAnticipate scale failures, performance cliffs, and architectural dead ends before they become incidentsEngineering Culture & StandardsRaise the technical bar through design reviews, architectural standards, and hands-on mentorship of both technical and non-technical stakeholdersEstablish lightweight, effective processes for how we make and document technical decisions: RFCs, ADRs, design reviewsBuild, design, and execute on internal AI tooling and patterns to drive AI enablement throughout the organizationExecutionThis is not a slides-and-diagrams role. You will write code — approximately 30-40% of your time, particularly on critical path migrations, performance-sensitive systems, and proving out architectural patternsLead by example: your PRs, design docs, and technical decisions set the standardSequence work pragmatically — you know how to migrate production databases serving millions of users without downtimeOur Ideal Candidate Will Have10+ years' of experience in technical leadership rolesBA/BS in Computer Science or equivalent experienceYou have experience with Ruby/Rails, TypeScript/React, Go, Python, and the ability to learn new stacks fastYou have an AI-native workflow. You likely have an agentic setup that you have tweaked and optimized for how you workYou have built agentic applications with both autonomous and strong human-in-the-loop UX patternsDemonstrated experience building and scaling complex products and applicationsPhysical RequirementsThis position works most of the time in a fixed office location and may involve sitting and/or standing for prolonged periodsFrequently required to communicate verbally and in writing (mostly email) with candidates, other employees, and vendorsUse of computer, telephone, and other office equipment for the greater part of the workdayOccasional travel may be required to conferences or to other Procare officesWhy Procare?Excellent comprehensive benefits packages including: medical, dental, & vision plansHSA option with employer contributionsVacation time, holidays, sick days, volunteer & personal days401K Plan with employer match and immediate vestingEmployee Stock Purchase PlanEmployee Discount ProgramMedical, Dependent Care, and Transportation FSA PlansCompany paid Short and Long-Term disability and Life InsuranceRTD EcoPass for all Denver employeesTuition Reimbursement and continued Professional DevelopmentFast paced, high energy workplace environment in prime downtown locationRegular company provided mealsSalary$180,000 - $200,000/year DOELocationThis position can be based in our Denver, CO or Atlanta, GA offices. Procare operates in a hybrid working model based on business needs. Candidates must be willing and able to work in office a minimum of 3 days per week.