Senior Principal Engineer, Central Ops & Systems

About [Employer]

[Employer] has been one of the most loved brands in developer tooling, trusted by more than 20 million monthly users and over 20 billion container image pulls. From solo founders to the world's largest companies, developers rely on [Employer] to build, share, and run their applications across our suite of products including [Employer] Desktop, [Employer] Hub, and [Employer] Scout.We are a globally distributed, remote-first team building the tools that define how software gets built and delivered. As AI agents redefine software development, [Employer] is at the center of that shift, providing the sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default.

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The Role

[Employer] is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to serve as the technical visionary and architect for our Central Operations and Systems organization — the foundational platform that powers "how [Employer] does [Employer]", which includes corporate systems, developer AI/SDLC, infrastructure, reliability, and internal systems. This is one of the most impactful individual contributor roles at [Employer], responsible for defining and driving the technical strategy that enables [Employer]'s transformation to an AI-first company and effectively enables [Employer] to be "Customer 0" of [Employer]. Your influence will impact the work of every Dockhand every day.

As Senior Principal Engineer, you will establish strategic technical plans that span the company systems/data architecture and the end-to-end employee experience, make critical architectural decisions that affect [Employer]'s entire internal systems portfolio, and drive technical execution of cross-company initiatives that directly enable every Dockhand. You'll work at the technical intersection of AI, platform infrastructure, developer SDLC, corporate systems, and [Employer] products, ensuring all systems work together seamlessly to support [Employer]'s most precious resources: our employees.

This role requires someone who combines deep technical expertise across multiple domains. Managing the breadth is both the exciting and challenging part of this role. You'll be recognized across [Employer] as the definitive expert on employee experience, consulted by executives on strategic technical decisions, and responsible for ensuring that every Dockhand has the right tools at the right time to do their day to day work.

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Responsibilities

Technical Vision & Strategic Planning

• Define and own the multi-year technical vision for [Employer]'s Central Operations and Systems group, encompassing internal AI, developer tools, infrastructure, reliability, and corporate systems.
• Establish strategic plans and objectives for major initiatives, making architectural decisions that ensure [Employer]'s business objectives are met.
• Contribute to and drive the strategic vision in collaboration with engineering leadership, translating organizational strategy into technical roadmaps that span multiple teams and time horizons
• Identify and prioritize investments that provide maximum leverage—capabilities built once that enable rapid adoption and increase productivity across the employee base
• Develop architectural principles and standards that guide technical decisions across the Central Operations and Systems group and influence product engineering teams
• Anticipate future business needs and ensure platform architecture provides the flexibility to support [Employer]'s evolving commercial models

Cross-Company Technical Leadership

• Lead technical vision and implementation for large cross-company programs that require coordination across all [Employer] teams
• Architect the [Employer] SDLC "Golden Path": how Dockhands build, manage and deploy systems and software, as applicable
• Drive convergence of fragmented systems across [Employer]—replacing product-specific implementations with shared platform capabilities
• Establish technical contracts between platform and product teams that enable independent velocity while ensuring consistency and reliability
• Lead architectural reviews for major initiatives across [Employer], ensuring alignment with platform strategy and long-term maintainability
• Proactively identify and solve problems that impact critical areas of the business before they become blockers

Infrastructure & Developer Experience Architecture

• Define the infrastructure platform vision that removes infrastructure as a bottleneck to innovation—enabling teams to deploy experimental services in minutes, not weeks
• Architect standardized deployment patterns that encode best practices for security, scaling, monitoring, and reliability
• Design infrastructure that specifically supports AI and agent initiatives—rapid deployment, programmatic environment creation, consistent APIs
• Establish observability standards that provide distributed tracing, metrics, log aggregation, and error tracking out of the box for every service
• Drive cost optimization across platform infrastructure while maintaining performance and reliability standards

Technical Excellence & Influence

• Work with senior managers and directors across [Employer] organization to drive operations and strategy
• Mentor and develop Staff and Principal engineers, raising the technical bar across the organization
• Represent [Employer]'s platform architecture and AI adoption externally through blog posts, conference talks, and technical community engagement
• Participate in executive-level discussions on technical strategy, providing architectural perspective on business decisions
• Drive build-vs-buy decisions for critical platform components, evaluating vendor solutions against [Employer]'s specific requirements
• This role may require participation in an on-call rotation to provide support outside of standard business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as needed.

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Qualifications

Required

Technical Expertise

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated expertise across multiple domains (SDLC, AI engineering, corporate systems, etc)
• Proven track record architecting and delivering large-scale distributed systems serving millions of users and thousands of enterprise customers
• Broad working knowledge across all platform domains with ability to make sound architectural decisions spanning multiple areas
• Expert-level understanding of API design, service architecture, and system integration patterns at scale, including in-house vs. vendor developed systems.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern infrastructure patterns (Kubernetes, service mesh, infrastructure-as-code)
• Knowledge of enterprise security requirements, compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001), and their architectural implications
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Strategic & Business Impact

• Track record of establishing strategic technical plans that directly enabled business outcomes (revenue growth, cost reduction, market expansion)
• Experience translating business strategy into technical architecture and roadmaps
• Demonstrated ability to identify and prioritize investments that provide maximum platform leverage
• Understanding of SaaS business models, enterprise sales cycles, and how platform capabilities influence commercial success
• Experience making build-vs-buy decisions for critical platform components

Leadership & Influence

• Proven ability to drive large cross-company technical programs requiring coordination across multiple engineering organizations
• Experience working with VPs and executives to set and execute technical strategy
• Track record of influencing technical direction without direct authority—building consensus across teams with different priorities
• Strong communication skills with ability to present to executives, influence leadership, and drive alignment at all levels
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leadership

Preferred

• Experience at developer tools, infrastructure software, or B2B SaaS companies at significant scale
• Background with container technologies, [Employer], Kubernetes, or developer productivity platforms
• Track record of successfully migrating legacy systems while maintaining business continuity
• Knowledge of Financial Operations and infrastructure cost optimization at scale
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• External recognition as a technical leader (conference speaking, publications, open source contributions)

Key Success Metrics

Platform Leverage & Velocity

• Product teams can launch enterprise-ready features in
• [Employer] teams rapidly adopt new capabilities within 2 months of release (vs. 6+ months today)

Technical Excellence

• Platform systems achieve 99.9%+ uptime for business-critical workflows
• Infrastructure platform reduces deployment time for new services from 2-4 weeks to

Organizational Impact

• Recognized across [Employer] as the definitive technical authority on internal architecture
• Successfully drive convergence of fragmented systems, reducing technical debt and operational burden
• Develop multiple Staff and Principal engineers who can own major platform domains

Visa sponsorship: [Employer] considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs.

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Compensation & Equity

All full-time roles include equity. Final compensation is determined on factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, and location.

United States: $219K – $352K base

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Posting Information

• Open vacancy: This posting is for an existing open role.
• AI in hiring: [Employer] may use AI-assisted tools during our recruiting process.
• Interview recordings: Candidates will be invited to opt in to interview recordings to support interviewer calibration and consistent evaluations. Recordings are optional and require explicit consent.

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Perks & Benefits

• Remote-first by design – Work from your home, with offices in Seattle and Paris for connection and collaboration.
• Flexibility that fits your life – We trust you to manage your schedule while delivering great work.
• Time to recharge – Generous PTO, designated quarterly Whaleness Days, and a designated end-of-year Whaleness break.
• Home office support – Set up your workspace for comfort and success.
• Technology stipend – Equivalent to US$100 net per month to help support your work.
• Learning & development – Annual stipend for conferences, courses, certifications, and continued learning.
• Parental leave – 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment.
• Equity for all full-time employees – Share in [Employer]'s long-term success as we continue to grow.
• Comprehensive benefits – Medical, retirement, and paid holidays vary by country.
• [Employer] swag – Because representing the whale never gets old.

[Employer] is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team that reflects a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe diverse teams build better products, make better decisions, and better serve our global community.

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