Senior Principal Engineer, Central Ops & Systems

Responsibilities

Technical Vision and Strategic Planning

• Define and own the multi-year technical vision for Central Operations and Systems, covering internal AI, developer tools, infrastructure, reliability, and corporate systems.
• Establish strategic plans, objectives, architectural decisions, principles, and standards for major initiatives.
• Translate organizational strategy into technical roadmaps spanning multiple teams and time horizons.
• Identify and prioritize high-leverage investments that improve productivity across the employee base.
• Anticipate future business needs and maintain flexible platform architecture.

Cross-Company Technical Leadership

• Lead technical vision and implementation for large cross-company programs.
• Architect the Docker SDLC “Golden Path” for building, managing, and deploying systems and software.
• Drive convergence of fragmented systems into shared platform capabilities.
• Establish technical contracts between platform and product teams.
• Lead architectural reviews and proactively resolve issues affecting critical business areas.

Infrastructure and Developer Experience

• Define infrastructure platform strategies that accelerate service deployment and innovation.
• Architect standardized deployment patterns incorporating security, scaling, monitoring, and reliability best practices.
• Design infrastructure for AI and agent initiatives, including rapid deployment and programmatic environment creation.
• Establish observability standards covering distributed tracing, metrics, log aggregation, and error tracking.
• Drive infrastructure cost optimization while maintaining performance and reliability.

Technical Excellence and Influence

• Work with senior managers and directors to drive operations and strategy.
• Mentor Staff and Principal engineers and raise the organization’s technical bar.
• Represent platform architecture and AI adoption through technical writing, conference talks, and community engagement.
• Participate in executive discussions on technical strategy and business decisions.
• Lead build-versus-buy evaluations for critical platform components.
• Participate in on-call rotations, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as needed.

Requirements

• 12+ years of software engineering experience across multiple domains, including SDLC, AI engineering, and corporate systems.
• Experience architecting and delivering large-scale distributed systems serving millions of users and thousands of enterprise customers.
• Broad knowledge across platform domains and the ability to make architectural decisions spanning multiple areas.
• Expert understanding of API design, service architecture, and large-scale system integration patterns, including in-house and vendor-developed systems.
• Experience with AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure and modern infrastructure patterns.
• Knowledge of enterprise security requirements and compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience establishing technical plans that enable business outcomes such as revenue growth, cost reduction, or market expansion.
• Ability to translate business strategy into technical architecture and roadmaps.
• Understanding of SaaS business models, enterprise sales cycles, and platform-driven commercial success.
• Experience making build-versus-buy decisions for critical platform components.
• Ability to lead large cross-company technical programs across multiple engineering organizations.
• Experience working with VPs and executives to set and execute technical strategy.
• Ability to influence technical direction without direct authority and build consensus across teams.
• Strong executive communication and presentation skills.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leadership.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience at developer tools, infrastructure software, or B2B SaaS companies at significant scale.

Compensation

• Annual salary range: $219,000–$352,000.