Principal Engineer
Leads technical strategy and architecture for high-scale messaging infrastructure handling millions of messages, drives cross-team initiatives, and mentors senior engineers. Requires 12+ years experience in distributed systems, event streaming, and cloud-native backend engineering.
About the job
What You Will Own
Technical Strategy & Architecture
- Own the multi-year technical vision for messaging infrastructure, ensuring architectural decisions position Weave for scale, reliability, and competitive advantage
- Drive architectural coherence across multiple teams, identifying and resolving cross-system dependencies and technical debt at the platform level
- Lead technical due diligence for major initiatives, including build-vs-buy decisions, vendor evaluations, and platform migrations
Cross-Team Problem Solving
- Identify and solve company-level technical problems that span organizational boundaries—the problems that are too complex, too cross-cutting, or too ambiguous for any single team to own
- Compile information across systems, teams, and projects to develop comprehensive solutions with extensive validation, rollback, and testing plans
- Forecast project costs in time, money, and opportunity cost; account for impacts across the business
Strategic Technical Leadership
- Monitor the industry landscape, anticipate where messaging and data infrastructure are heading, and ensure Weave stays ahead of the curve
- Cut through noise and hype to identify genuine strategic value; advocate for and lead key initiatives that prepare Weave for emerging challenges
- Shape company-wide standards for engineering excellence, observability, and reliability in distributed systems
Mentorship & Organizational Capability
- Actively mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across the fellowship, developing the next generation of technical leaders
- Elevate architectural thinking across teams through design reviews, documentation standards, and hands-on guidance
- Build organizational capability that persists beyond your individual contributions
What You Will Need to Accomplish the Job
- 12+ years of software engineering experience with progressive technical leadership scope
- Track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives that delivered measurable business outcomes
- Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, build consensus across organizational boundaries, and translate technical tradeoffs into business terms
- Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture, including building and operating services that handle hundreds of millions of transactions and terabytes of data
- Proven experience with event streaming and messaging infrastructure (Kafka, Google Pub/Sub, or similar) at significant scale
- Strong background in scalable data stores—both relational (PostgreSQL at scale, Vitess, Spanner) and NoSQL (Bigtable, Redis, etc.)
- Operational experience with cloud-native infrastructure on GCP or AWS, including Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and highly available system design
- Solid backend engineering foundation (Go preferred; Python, Java, or C# acceptable)
What Will Make Us Love You
- Experience with messaging delivery systems, carrier/aggregator integrations, or telecommunications infrastructure
- Expertise in data platform architecture: streaming pipelines, data lakes, warehouses, or distributed analytics
- Background in compliance-heavy environments (healthcare, fintech) with experience navigating regulatory requirements in technical design
- Experience shaping AI/ML infrastructure or integrating AI capabilities into production systems
- History of external technical leadership: open source contributions, conference speaking, or published technical writing
- Strong opinions, loosely held—you bring conviction to technical discussions while remaining genuinely open to better ideas
Skills
Go, Python, Java, C#, Kafka, Google Pub/Sub, Postgres, Vitess, Spanner, Bigtable, Redis, Kubernetes, GCP, AWS, Distributed Systems
Similar jobs
Engineering Management jobs
Docker
United States
Provides company-wide technical vision and architecture for Central Operations and Systems, spanning AI, infrastructure, developer experience, reliability, and corporate systems. The role requires 12+ years of software engineering experience, large-scale distributed systems expertise, and strong cross-company executive influence.
Garner Health
United States
Staff Software Engineer leading technical strategy, complex AI-enabled systems, engineering mentorship, and privacy-focused practices. Requires 6+ years of software engineering experience, team leadership, and familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, AI coding agents, data security, and HIPAA compliance.
Crusoe
Dallas, TX
Leads mechanical commissioning across data center projects, managing testing, documentation, vendors, and turnover from factory testing through operational readiness. Requires 7+ years in data center commissioning or critical infrastructure, mechanical expertise, and a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
Stripe
San Francisco, CALeads and scales a technical account management organization serving major strategic users, while driving service quality, revenue growth, hiring, and operational improvements. Requires 10+ years leading teams in technical services, customer success, solutions architecture, or technical account management, plus a bachelor’s degree.
Snowflake
Bellevue, WA
Leads the product and engineering strategy for AI-native enterprise applications across Finance, HR, and Legal, partnering with executives to transform workflows into intelligent products. Requires 15+ years in enterprise technology, product management, or software engineering and substantial multidisciplinary leadership experience.