Principal Software Engineer

Ciklum

$150K — $180K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in a Staff or Principal engineer role at B2B SaaS startups
  • Proficient in Java/J2EE, Oracle, Postgres, AWS, GCP, Azure, and modern frontend frameworks like React and Vue.js
  • Experience in building and operating modern B2B SaaS applications with strong engineering fundamentals
  • Demonstrated leadership in setting architectural direction across multiple teams and making impactful technical decisions
  • Strong communication skills with a proven track record of mentoring engineers and influencing decisions

Responsibilities

  • Own and evolve architecture across product and platform
  • Lead architecture reviews and influence roadmaps for delivery and maintainability
  • Identify and drive systemic product/platform opportunities across teams
  • Evaluate and pilot new technologies; establish best practices in design and testing
  • Solve complex cross-team problems and align stakeholders for decision-making
  • Guide architecture for global cloud deployments and compliance certification
  • Mentor engineers and coach technical leads on design quality

Benefits

  • Collaborative work culture with top professionals
  • Opportunities for growth through large-scale projects
  • Access to tailored learning resources including workshops and certifications
  • Internal mobility to explore diverse domains and technologies
  • Comprehensive healthcare and insurance benefits
Full Job Description
Job Description

About the role:

As a Principal Software Engineer, become a part of a cross-functional development team engineering experiences of tomorrow.

Responsibilities:
  • Own architecture across product and platform
    • Define and evolve platform and application architecture, including service boundaries, integration patterns, data modeling, and API standards
    • Lead architecture reviews and influence roadmaps to balance near-term delivery with long-term simplicity, maintainability, and performance
    • Identify systemic product/platform opportunities (simplification, modularization, shared services) and drive cross-team execution
  • Introduce new technologies and best practices
    • Evaluate and introduce new technologies responsibly pilot, measure outcomes, document learnings, and scale adoption where valuable
    • Establish best practices in design, testing, secure coding, CI/CD, and production readiness; create reference implementations and templates
    • Raise engineering quality through clarity: design docs, decision records, coding standards, and measurable technical KPIs
  • Solve the hardest cross-team problems
    • Partner across teams to unblock complex initiatives: modernization, major refactors, performance tuning, data migrations, and distributed systems challenges
    • Drive alignment across stakeholders making tradeoffs explicit and decisions durable
    • Help teams debug and resolve high-severity production issues; codify learnings into better patterns and guardrails
  • Global cloud and regulated environment leadership
    • Guide architecture for global cloud deployments (multi-region strategy, DR, availability, and operability)
    • Support FedRAMP/government cloud certification readiness by shaping technical controls implementation plans with Security/Compliance
  • Mentor and coach across the organization
    • Mentor engineers across teams; coach technical leads on design quality, execution, and engineering judgment
    • Build learning mechanisms: architecture guilds, tech talks, post-incident reviews, and hands-on design workshops

Requirements:
  • Technical breadth (multi-stack)
    • Ten years of overall experience, with at least five years as a Staff or Principal engineer at B2B SaaS startups
    • Strong working knowledge across: Java/J2EE, Oracle, Postgres, AWS, GCP, Azure, and modern frontend frameworks (React, Vue.js)
    • Ability to move between systems-level architecture and hands-on problem solving, deep where needed, broad by default
    • Experience building and operating modern B2B SaaS applications with strong engineering fundamentals
  • Architecture leadership
    • Proven success setting architectural direction across multiple teams and making durable technical decisions
    • Strong systems design skills: scalability, reliability, performance, data consistency, and operational maturity
    • Ability to drive alignment, influence roadmaps, and lead through ambiguity with pragmatic tradeoffs
  • Global cloud + FedRAMP experience
    • Experience with global cloud systems and production operations at scale (multi-region deployments, DR/BCP, observability)
    • Experience supporting FedRAMP/government cloud certification and/or comparable regulated environments
  • Mentorship and communication
    • Strong written and verbal communication; able to author clear design docs and influence across engineering, product, and leadership
    • Track record of mentoring and coaching engineers across teams, improving quality and raising the technic al bar
  • Education:
    • A bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field
    • Master's degree preferred

Desirable:
  • Experience designing shared services (identity/auth, platform APIs) and driving adoption through developer experience improvements
  • Experience with Kubernetes, service meshes, and platform tooling that improves developer productivity
  • Experience leading large-scale modernization of legacy Java/J2EE systems
  • Experience in commercial real estate software

What's in it for you?
  • Strong community: Work alongside top professionals in a friendly, open-door environment
  • Growth focus: Take on large-scale projects with a global impact and expand your expertise
  • Tailored learning: Boost your skills with internal events (meetups, conferences, workshops), Udemy access, language courses, and company-paid certifications
  • Endless opportunities: Explore diverse domains through internal mobility, finding the best fit to gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies
  • Care: Healthcare, Basic Life Insurance, Short and Long-term disability insurance according to the Company's Benefit Plans

Interested already? We would love to get to know you! Submit your application. We can't wait to see you at Ciklum.

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