Proven leadership of projects involving multiple teams across functional domains
Excellent communication skills with both engineering colleagues and senior business leaders
Responsibilities
Drive execution of large-scale strategic initiatives to improve business outcomes
Align leaders and teams around high-value projects with clear priorities
Influence decisions on organizational structure and resource allocation
Set priorities across teams, balancing short-term delivery with long-term goals
Lead collaboration with Product, Data Science, and business stakeholders
Establish and evolve technical standards and best practices
Communicate complex technical concepts to executive leaders
Coach and influence engineering leaders to enhance organizational impact
Benefits
Work-from-home flexibility across the US
Eligibility for competitive bonus
Equity offering availability
Focus on collaboration with cross-functional teams
Support for professional growth and coaching opportunities
Full Job Description
The Opportunity
We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join and lead engineering at Root. As a Principal Engineer, you will be the primary technical leader within a product domain. You'll work very closely with the software engineers on your team(s) to plan, design and deploy valuable software as well as the broad set of stakeholders to define the strategy and overall roadmap for the domain.
Root is a "work where it works best" company. This means we will support you working in whatever location that works best for you across the US.
Drive end-to-end execution of large-scale, strategic initiatives that materially improve business outcomes (e.g., revenue, loss ratio, customer experience).
Align leaders and teams around high-value initiatives, ensuring clarity on priorities, tradeoffs, and expected impact.
Make and influence decisions on organizational structure, team topology, and resource allocation to enable successful execution of critical initiatives.
Set and guide priorities across multiple teams and domains, balancing short-term delivery with long-term scalability and resilience.
Lead cross-functional collaboration with Product, Data Science, and business stakeholders to translate strategy into coordinated execution.
Establish and evolve technical standards, architecture, and best practices that scale across the organization.
Communicate complex technical and strategic concepts to drive decision-making and alignment at the executive level.
Coach and influence engineering leaders and senior ICs, raising the organization's ability to identify opportunities and deliver business impact at scale.
Coordinate with Staff Engineers across the organization to establish and evangelize standards and best practices.
What You Will Need to Succeed
10+ years as a software engineer
Proven leadership of projects involving multiple teams across functional domains
Excellent communication skills both with engineering colleagues and senior business leaders
As part of Root's interview process, we kindly ask that all candidates be on camera for virtual interviews. This helps us create a more personal and engaging experience for both you and our interviewers. Being on camera is a standard requirement for our process and part of how we assess fit and communication style, so we do require it to move forward with any applicant's candidacy. If you have any concerns, feel free to let us know once you are contacted. We're happy to talk it through.
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