# Principal Software Engineer

**Company:** [Standard Template Labs](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/standard-template-labs)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Fullstack Engineering
**Salary:** $200k – $250k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** artificial intelligence, LLMs, Embeddings, Vector Databases, RAG, Agent Frameworks, graph databases, Distributed Systems, Go, Rust, Python, Java, C++, Microservices, DevOps
**Posted:** 2025-09-09

> Leads the architecture and hands-on development of end-to-end AI systems spanning data ingestion, reasoning, backend services, APIs, and user experiences. The role requires 10+ years of software engineering experience, distributed-systems expertise, and production experience with LLMs, embeddings, RAG, or agent workflows.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

### AI-Native Architecture & Technical Strategy
- Architect the platform’s core intelligence layer, spanning data ingestion, embeddings, retrieval, graph reasoning, agents, and real-time inference.
- Define how LLMs and predictive models integrate across backend services, APIs, and user-facing experiences.
- Identify opportunities where generative, predictive, or autonomous AI can reduce operational toil, improve system understanding, or enhance decision-making.
- Lead decisions involving model selection, evaluation, fine-tuning, and inference infrastructure.
- Establish practices for prompt and schema design, context assembly, evaluators, guardrails, observability, and continuous model monitoring.
- Partner with product and leadership to align AI capabilities with customer outcomes, trust requirements, and platform strategy.

### Full-Stack Applied AI Development
- Build end-to-end AI-powered features, from backend reasoning services to APIs and user-facing workflows.
- Design and implement production-grade LLM and agent workflows for automated enrichment, anomaly explanation, topology discovery, change impact analysis, and natural-language querying.
- Develop scalable backend systems for high-throughput inference, embedding generation, vector search, and graph traversal.
- Contribute to frontend experiences that make AI outputs understandable, actionable, and debuggable through explanations, confidence signals, provenance, and feedback loops.
- Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and hybrid search systems combining structured data, graphs, and unstructured context.
- Write production-quality code and champion AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf.
- Evaluate and integrate emerging AI frameworks, agent runtimes, orchestration tools, and model APIs where they provide user value.

### Data, Infrastructure & Platform Foundations
- Design data models and pipelines supporting learning, reasoning, and traceability.
- Build observable, fault-tolerant, and cost-efficient distributed systems for AI workloads.
- Partner with infrastructure and DevOps teams on deployment, scaling, monitoring, and rollback strategies.
- Ensure AI systems meet enterprise requirements for reliability, security, explainability, and compliance.

### Mentorship, Influence & Technical Leadership
- Mentor engineers on full-stack AI patterns, AI workload system design, and shipping intelligent features.
- Lead architecture reviews and technical deep dives focused on reliability, safety, performance, and user trust.
- Influence engineering standards and culture, emphasizing craftsmanship, clarity, and ownership.
- Help attract and develop engineering talent focused on AI-native, product-driven systems.

## Requirements
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including technical leadership in complex, high-scale systems.
- Experience architecting and shipping distributed systems with meaningful AI, automation, or intelligent decisioning components.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, or model integration patterns.
- Strong system design skills across APIs, data modeling, event-driven architectures, caching, storage, and performance optimization.
- Comfort working across the stack, including backend services and user-facing or API-layer design.
- Proficiency in at least one of Go, Rust, Python, Java, or C++.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering best practices.
- Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows and modern DevOps tooling.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience operationalizing ML or LLM workloads in production at scale.
- Background in microservices, event-driven systems, or real-time data pipelines.
- Exposure to frontend frameworks or strong product intuition around AI user experiences.
- Experience with high-throughput, low-latency, or mission-critical systems.
- Open-source contributions or demonstrated technical leadership in distributed systems or AI tooling.

## Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive compensation, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package.
- Estimated yearly salary: **$200,000–$250,000 USD**.

## Similar roles

- [Principal Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2f11c8bf-28c5-46f8-a089-2466d82da64f) - Twilio - Remote - $188k – $277k/yr
- [Principal Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/a7ff36b7-0085-43dc-ae66-748ca509ac25) - Idme - Mountain View, CA - $215k – $307k/yr
- [Principal Software Engineer - Pay Group Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6a00ba84-c85d-4949-ab1b-b80a50f915a6) - Gusto - Denver, CO - $215k – $295k/yr
- [Principal Engineer, Software](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6cf307f2-1ac9-4385-8eec-7219e2119901) - Shield AI - Remote - $220k – $330k/yr
- [Member of Technical Staff, TypeScript Engineer (Principal)](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/0c5445ef-f68f-4c34-9fa3-a7bbdc9a945f) - Inkeep - New York, NY - $180k – $250k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/b25459f2-fb4d-4bbf-977f-f9cf8026f8d4
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/b25459f2-fb4d-4bbf-977f-f9cf8026f8d4