Principal Software Engineer (AI)

Quick Facts

• Role: Principal Software Engineer (AI)

• Focus: Technical architecture and long-term evolution of a core enterprise platform

• Emphasis areas: scalability, performance, reliability, security, extensibility, operational efficiency

Description

Define and evolve the long-term architecture and technical strategy for a mission-critical core platform that supports enterprise-scale applications and workflows. Provide cross-organizational technical leadership across multiple platform domains and drive execution on complex architectural challenges. Apply AI and automation opportunities to improve software development, testing, platform operations, and developer productivity.

Responsibilities

• Own architectural direction across platform domains; set principles, standards, and design patterns to reduce complexity

• Resolve challenging architectural problems balancing customer needs, platform evolution, engineering efficiency, and maintainability

• Simplify and modernize architecture to reduce technical debt and improve separation of concerns

• Architect for scalability across customers, instances, workloads, and usage patterns

• Improve runtime architecture, workload isolation, resource utilization, database access, service communication, and execution efficiency

• Establish resilience approaches: fault isolation, graceful degradation, predictable performance

• Use telemetry and production insights to identify bottlenecks and prioritize high-impact improvements

• Lead architecture for initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams and domains; align trade-offs and implementation plans

• Partner with engineering, product, security, and operations to translate business needs into actionable plans

• Mentor principal and senior engineers to raise architectural and execution quality

• Champion engineering excellence using automation, CI, contract testing, observability, and telemetry-driven practices

• Evaluate emerging technologies and translate AI/automation innovations into practical scalable capabilities

• Define measurable success criteria and validate outcomes through customer impact and engineering/operational metrics

Requirements

• Extensive experience designing and evolving large-scale enterprise software platforms, distributed systems, or cloud-based SaaS architectures

• Deep expertise in distributed systems, multi-tenant architectures, runtime platforms, service-oriented architectures, and foundational platform engineering

• Experience applying AI and automation to engineering productivity, software quality, and platform operations

• Experience architecting enterprise SaaS platforms operating at significant scale with extensive customer customization and integration requirements

• Proven ability to define architecture across multiple technical domains and lead complex, cross-team initiatives

• Strong understanding of performance engineering, scalability, reliability, fault isolation, security, and operational resilience

• Deep knowledge of API architecture, platform extensibility, backward compatibility, and integration patterns

• Ability to influence engineering strategy and technical decisions across organizational boundaries

• Exceptional architectural judgment and ability to translate strategy into incremental executable plans

• Strong communication skills with senior engineering and executive leadership

Benefits

• Base pay guideline: $221,200–$387,100 plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation, and benefits

• Health plans, flexible spending accounts, 401(k) with company match, ESPP, matching donations

• Flexible time away plan and family leave programs