Principal Software Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA

Work Style: Hybrid

Employment Type: Full-time

Compensation: $320,000 -$470,000 total cash compensation

Focus: Distributed Systems, AI-Native Engineering, Platform Architecture, Technical Strategy

About the Role

Our client is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to set technical direction across the engineering organization.

This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who can own the hardest, most ambiguous, and highest-stakes technical decisions across product, platform, infrastructure, and AI-native systems.

This person will help shape the product for years to come, partner with engineering and product leadership, and serve as a force multiplier across multiple teams. The right candidate has the technical judgment, architecture depth, and influence to align senior engineers and leaders around company-defining technical bets.

What You'll Do

• Own technical direction for the company's most critical and ambiguous engineering problems
• Make long-term architectural decisions across product, platform, distributed systems, and AI-native infrastructure
• Set technical strategy for rebuilding the platform around AI and agents
• Translate high-level technical strategy into direction that engineering teams can execute
• Raise the engineering bar through standards, patterns, architecture reviews, and technical decision-making
• Mentor and multiply the impact of senior engineers across the organization
• Partner with engineering and product leadership as a peer on long-term technical direction
• Use AI-assisted development and agents to move faster across design, investigation, and implementation
• Define practices that help other engineers adopt AI-native engineering workflows
• Identify opportunities where AI can reshape not just how fast the team ships, but how the product itself is built

What We're Looking For

• Proven track record setting technical direction across an engineering organization
• Experience shaping product or platform architecture across multiple teams
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, architecture, reliability, scale, and cost tradeoffs
• Strong judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes technical environments
• Ability to align teams and senior technical leaders around complex architectural decisions
• Experience multiplying the output of senior engineers through design, review, mentorship, and technical leadership
• Genuine, current fluency with AI-assisted development tools and agentic engineering workflows
• Clear point of view on how AI will change engineering, product development, and platform architecture
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence engineering, product, and executive stakeholders
• Ability to operate at both strategic and technical levels without losing connection to execution

Technical Environment

Relevant technologies include:

• React
• Ruby and Ruby on Rails
• Python
• MongoDB
• Elasticsearch
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Terraform
• GCP
• AI-assisted development tools
• Agentic engineering workflows

Experience with every tool is not required. Our client cares more about architectural judgment, technical depth, and the ability to lead through complex systems decisions.

Why This Opportunity

• Own company-defining technical bets at a profitable, fast-growing SaaS company
• Help rebuild a major go-to-market platform around AI and agents
• Work as a peer to engineering and product leadership
• Influence architecture, engineering standards, and technical direction across the organization
• Build systems used by millions of users and hundreds of thousands of companies
• Help define what AI-native engineering looks like at organizational scale
• Step into a Principal-level role with broad scope, high visibility, and long-term technical impact

Compensation & Benefits

• San Francisco total cash compensation range: $315,300-$472,900
• Equity eligibility
• Company bonus or applicable incentive compensation
• 401(k)
• Paid holidays
• Flexible PTO
• Parental leave
• Employee assistance and wellbeing benefits
• Global travel coverage
• Life, AD&D, STD, and LTD insurance
• FSA/HSA options
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a true Principal-level engineer who has shaped technical direction across an engineering organization, not just within a single team.

They have deep distributed systems expertise, strong architectural judgment, and the ability to influence senior engineers and leaders through clarity, credibility, and technical depth.

This person is AI-native in how they work, excited by agentic engineering, and ready to help define the long-term technical foundation of a major revenue technology platform.