Principal Engineer - Test Platform Services

Within our Tools and Automation organization, the Test Platform Services (TPS) team builds and operates the platforms and automation that validate SimpliSafe's end-to-end ecosystem - spanning the full product stack: connected cameras and sensors, base stations, firmware, cloud services, monitoring workflows, and mobile applications. We enable scalable, production-like validation across hardware, firmware, and distributed software systems to ensure our devices behave correctly in real-world conditions and that critical customer journeys function reliably before reaching production. We are seeking a Software Engineer to lead TPS's technical vision while leading a team of engineers. This role combines hands-on architectural ownership with people leadership, execution accountability, and technical mentorship. This is a highly collaborative position partnering closely with Infrastructure, Backend, Firmware, and Monitoring teams to ensure our validation platforms evolve alongside product and system complexity. It's ideal for a leader who wants to remain deeply technical while shaping a high-impact engineering team responsible for validating complex, distributed systems at scale. What You'll Do - Establish and execute the long-term architectural vision for scalable validation platforms, including automation, performance, and resilience testing capabilities - Partner cross-functionally with Infrastructure, Backend, Firmware, Monitoring, and Product teams to align validation systems with product architecture, roadmaps, and business goals - Ensure virtual devices and simulation systems accurately reflect real-world hardware behavior, eliminating drift between physical and virtual environments - Build and operate validation platforms that are reliable, observable, cost-efficient, and trusted, with clear metrics to monitor platform health and validation effectiveness - Drive continuous performance, scalability, and resilience analysis, proactively identifying system bottlenecks and leveraging data-driven and AI-assisted approaches to improve validation and code quality. - Grow and lead a high-performing TPS team, establishing engineering standards, embedding shift-left validation practices, and fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement What You'll Bring Required - 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building and scaling distributed, cloud-native systems, with end-to-end ownership across the software lifecycle - Deep expertise in scalability, reliability, observability, and production-grade system architecture - Strong hands-on engineering capability and experience operating infrastructure in AWS (Kubernetes/EKS preferred) - Experience building and operating internal platforms or shared engineering systems used across multiple teams - Proven experience leading and developing engineers in a player/coach or technical leadership capacity Strongly Preferred - Experience with device simulation, embedded systems, firmware-cloud integration, or IoT environments - Experience designing validation, orchestration, performance, load, or resilience testing systems - Demonstrated ability to balance long-term architectural vision with pragmatic execution - Experience influencing cross-functional engineering strategy in a high-growth or complex distributed systems environment What Values You'll Share - Customer Obsessed - Building deep empathy for our customers, putting them at the core of our work, and developing strong, long-term relationships with them. - Aim High - Always challenging ourselves and others to raise the bar. - No Ego - Maintaining a "no job too small" attitude, and an open, inclusive and humble style. - One Team - Taking a highly collaborative approach to achieving success. - Lift As We Climb - Investing in developing others and helping others around us succeed. - Lean & Nimble - Working with agility and efficiency to experiment in an often ambiguous environment. What We Offer - A mission- and values-driven culture and a safe, inclusive environment where you can build, grow and thrive - A comprehensive total rewards package that supports your wellness and provides security for SimpliSafers and their families (For more information on our total rewards please click here) - Free SimpliSafe system and professional monitoring for your home. - Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that bring people together, give opportunities to network, mentor and develop, and advocate for change. The target annual base pay range for this role is $168,000 to $247,000. This target annual base pay range represents our good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this role. We use a market-based compensation approach to set our target annual base pay ranges and make adjustments annually. We carefully tailor individual compensation packages, including base pay, taking into consideration employees' job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and other relevant business factors. Beyond base pay, we offer a Total Rewards package that may include participation in our annual bonus program, equity, and other forms of compensation, in addition to a full range of medical, retirement, and lifestyle benefits. More details can be found here. We're committed to fair and equitable pay practices, as well as pay transparency. We regularly review our programs to ensure they remain competitive and aligned with our values.