Principal Software Engineer, Backend Engineering (Seattle, WA or McLean, VA or Remote)

{"Define and own the long-term technical vision and architectural roadmap, aligning it with business and product strategy.","Drive the selection and governance of foundational technologies, frameworks, and architectural patterns.","Future-proof the platform by anticipating technical challenges and industry trends.","Establish and enforce engineering-wide best practices for architecture, code, and design.","Drive initiatives to reduce technical debt and enhance platform scalability, security, performance, and observability.","Serve as the decision-maker on critical system designs, ensuring architectural cohesion across teams.","Mentor senior engineers and tech leads, elevating the team's architectural and problem-solving skills.","Lead hands-on by prototyping solutions and solving the most complex technical challenges.","Cultivate a culture of technical excellence and innovation across the engineering organization.","Translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical strategies by partnering with executive, product, and enterprise leaders.","Communicate complex architectural decisions to all stakeholders to build consensus and drive company-wide alignment."}

{"10-15+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale, distributed, cloud-native platforms.","Proven experience as a Principal/Staff Engineer or Senior Architect, setting technical direction and making high-impact architectural decisions across multiple teams.","Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Go, or Typescript, with a strong ability to write clean, maintainable code.","Expertise in modern cloud architecture (GCP, AWS, Azure), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and IaC (Terraform).","Deep knowledge of scalable architectures, API design (REST, gRPC), and event-driven systems.","A systems-thinking approach to problem-solving and making strategic trade-offs (performance, cost, security).","Exceptional communication skills with a proven ability to drive technical alignment.","Significant plus: Experience with infrastructure for ML Ops (model training, deployment, monitoring).","BS/MS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience."}