Full Job Description
We9re looking for a Principal Engineer to bring deep technical leadership to our Hosting platform at a pivotal moment for the business. This is a high-impact senior individual contributor role for someone who9s run large-scale hosting infrastructure end-to-end (Python, Linux, MySQL at scale, Perl, cPanel) and wants to shape architecture, reliability, and SRE practice as Bluehost modernizes and grows.
What You9ll Do & How You9ll Make Your Mark
• Set technical direction and architecture standards for backend and infrastructure systems across the Hosting org
• Design and evolve large-scale Python backend services running on Linux, backed by MySQL at production scale
• Bring deep, hands-on expertise on Perl-based and cPanel-integrated systems, guiding their modernization without disrupting live customer sites or live provisioning automations
• Drive site reliability engineering practice across Hosting, partnering closely with DevOps and SRE functions on incident response and system hardening
• Own the org-wide standard for AI-augmented delivery: where AI is used across the lifecycle and where it isn9t, how generated code is reviewed, how provenance and licensing are handled, and what customer data may enter a prompt - and measure whether the standard is actually holding
• Lead root-cause analysis on the most complex, highest-impact production issues, and turn findings into durable architectural fixes
• Mentor senior and staff-level engineers, raising the technical bar and influencing how the broader org builds and operates
• Partner with engineering leadership to shape multi-quarter technical roadmaps that support Bluehost9s growth trajectory
Who You Are & What You9ll Need to Succeed
• 10+ years of backend/infrastructure engineering experience, including deep, hands-on hosting-platform expertise
• Expert-level Python and Linux systems knowledge at real production scale
• Strong MySQL expertise, including performance tuning, schema design, and large-scale troubleshooting
• Deep hands-on experience in Perl and cPanel environments, with a track record of modernizing legacy systems without breaking them
• Preferred: strong background in Site Reliability Engineering and infrastructure practice, applying architectural patterns for systemic resilience, fault isolation, and operational governance
• AI-augmented delivery: you use AI across the delivery lifecycle, not just code generation, and can say which models suit which problems and where you don9t use them. You have set the org-wide standard for how AI-generated code is reviewed, how provenance and licensing are handled, and what customer data enters a prompt - and you can show how you measured adoption and outcomes against it, including what a security or compliance review will ask for.
• Proven technical leadership: setting direction, mentoring engineers, and influencing decisions across multiple teams
• Excellent judgment operating in complex, high-scale, customer-facing SaaS environments under real business pressure