Principal Engineer - Backend/AI

Principal Engineer About the Opportunity We are hiring a Principal Engineer for our awesome client which is a fast-growing, product-led SaaS company building modern customer and business communication software. This is the most senior individual contributor role in the engineering organization. You will work closely with the founders and product leadership to shape the technical future of multiple products, influence engineering strategy, and drive large-scale architecture decisions. This is not a role for someone who wants to sit on the sidelines reviewing designs. We're looking for a hands-on technical leader who can think several steps ahead, make high-conviction architecture decisions, build when necessary, and raise the engineering bar across the organization. What You'll Do Define the long-term technical architecture and engineering direction across multiple products and platforms. Lead large-scale system design, distributed systems, data architecture, reliability, scalability, and platform decisions. Establish strong engineering standards around architecture, code quality, developer productivity, and technical excellence. Work closely with engineering leaders, product teams, and senior stakeholders to solve complex technical and business problems. Identify and prevent technical bottlenecks that can slow down a rapidly scaling product organization. Build prototypes, internal platforms, and tools when needed to validate ideas and accelerate execution. Drive improvements in how engineering teams build, ship, test, and operate software. Influence technical culture and act as a force multiplier across the engineering organization. Stay hands-on with code and technology, especially when building or validating critical technical decisions. Explore and drive practical adoption of modern AI technologies within products and engineering workflows. What We're Looking For 12–16 years of software engineering experience, with a strong hands-on engineering foundation. Currently operating at Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Architect, or equivalent senior technical leadership level. Strong experience building and scaling cloud-native SaaS products, distributed systems, platforms, developer infrastructure, or enterprise software. Demonstrated ownership of significant architecture decisions that have had long-term impact on a product or organization. Strong backend and systems engineering depth, with experience in areas such as distributed systems, microservices, data infrastructure, cloud platforms, reliability, scalability, or developer platforms. Experience operating in a high-growth, startup, or high-ownership engineering environment, where engineers are expected to work with ambiguity and take end-to-end ownership. Ability to influence senior engineering leaders and product stakeholders without relying on organizational hierarchy. Strong track record of driving technical outcomes that have meaningful business impact. Still hands-on and comfortable writing code, building prototypes, and getting deep into technical problems. Exposure to AI/LLM technologies, AI-powered products, developer tooling, agentic systems, RAG, embeddings, or AI infrastructure is desirable, but extensive production AI experience is not mandatory. Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly to both technical and business stakeholders. What Makes This Role Different This is an opportunity to become the technical compass for an entire product organization. You will have significant autonomy to shape architecture, influence engineering culture, solve high-impact business problems, and define how a modern engineering organization evolves. We're looking for someone who combines: Deep technical expertise + strong ownership + business understanding + the ability to lead through influence. If you are a senior engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous, high-stakes problems and wants the scope to shape the technical direction of an entire product organization, this role offers a rare opportunity.