Architect - United States

What will you do?  What are we looking for? 

Role: Principal Software Engineer

Location: Remote

Experience Level: 12+ Years

About the Role

We are seeking an exceptional Principal Software Engineer to provide high-level technical leadership, drive architectural vision, and design robust, scalable distributed systems. In this role, you will take ambiguous business challenges and turn them into resilient, production-grade cloud platforms.

You will champion modern engineering practices by leveraging an AI-native engineering approach—utilizing agent skills, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and spec-driven development to accelerate development lifecycles while maintaining high standards for performance, security, and maintainability.

Key Responsibilities

• System Architecture & Design: Architect high-throughput, fault-tolerant backend services, distributed systems, and cloud-native solutions across AWS and GCP environments.
• Technical Leadership: Guide cross-functional teams through complex technical decisions, set best practices for code quality, testing (TDD), and system reliability, and mentor senior engineering talent.
• AI-Native Delivery: Integrate next-generation developer tooling (Cursor, Claude, autonomous agents, MCP workflows, and spec-driven design) to elevate team productivity and system delivery.
• Data Engineering & APIs: Design high-performance REST APIs and scalable data/ETL pipelines across relational, document, and columnar data stores.
• Production Ownership & DevOps: Drive end-to-end operational excellence, establishing robust CI/CD automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), container orchestration, JVM profiling, and real-time observability.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Partner closely with product management, engineering leaders, and key stakeholders to translate business goals into clear technical roadmaps.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Core Experience: 15+ years of hands-on software development experience building, scaling, and operating high-performance backend platforms.
• Programming Mastery: Deep expertise in Java and Python, with strong command over algorithms, multithreading, concurrent programming, and JVM tuning/profiling.
• Cloud Platforms:
  • AWS: Deep hands-on experience with Lambda, DynamoDB, SNS, SQS, S3, EC2/ASG, EKS, VPC, ElastiCache, RDS, Redshift, CloudWatch, and IAM/cross-account security.
  • GCP: Practical knowledge of BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Cloud Monitoring, and OpenTelemetry.
• Data & Storage Systems: Extensive experience with relational and NoSQL databases, data warehouses, and analytics pipelines (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, Athena, Palantir Foundry, ETL workflows).
• DevOps & Infrastructure: Strong proficiency with Terraform, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, Git, CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Screwdriver/GitHub Actions/GitLab), and CloudTrail.
• Modern AI Engineering: Demonstrated experience applying AI-assisted workflows (Cursor, Claude, MCP tools, agentic skills) to enhance software delivery.
• Leadership & Communication: Outstanding communication skills with proven ability to align diverse stakeholders and mentor senior engineering peers.

Compensation, Benefits and Duration

Minimum Compensation: USD 56,000
Maximum Compensation: USD 196,000
Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full-time employees.
This position is available for independent contractors
No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post