Principal Software Engineer

United States Digital Space LLC; Deutschland; Vor Ort; EUR 80.000 - 120.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a Principal Engineer to join their Product Platform Task Force. This role will lead high-impact technical projects and enhance the company's edge network infrastructure.

The ideal candidate has over 10 years of software engineering experience, expertise in distributed systems, and a proven track record of influencing engineering culture while mentoring teams. With significant autonomy, you will define technical strategies that benefit the entire organization.

Qualifikationen

• 10+ years of software engineering experience leading technical initiatives.
• Proficient in building secure, distributed systems at scale.
• Strong track record of mentoring and influencing engineering teams.

Aufgaben

• Define and lead execution of cross-cutting technical initiatives.
• Architect security-critical systems for distributed infrastructure.
• Mentor senior engineers and establish engineering excellence.

Kenntnisse

Distributed systems expertise

Technical leadership

Proficiency in Go

Experience with PostgreSQL

Security fundamentals

Ambiguous problem-solving

Jobbeschreibung

Available Locations: Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Washington D.C.

About the role

We're seeking an exceptional Principal Engineer to join our newly formed Product Platform Task Force—a high‑impact team that tackles critical infrastructure initiatives spanning our entire product suite and the company's massive edge network.

What you'll do

You'll partner with engineering leadership to identify, architect, and drive execution on complex technical projects that transcend individual team boundaries, from organization‑wide authentication and authorization systems to ultra‑distributed architectures that leverage the company's global edge infrastructure, performance optimizations, and shared services that enable multiple products. This role is perfect for a seasoned technical leader who excels at solving ambiguous, high‑stakes problems with broad organizational impact, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing technical direction that influences the entire engineering organization. You'll have significant autonomy to shape our technical strategy while working collaboratively across product teams, platform engineers, and executive leadership to ensure our infrastructure scales efficiently and our engineering culture thrives.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy and lead execution of high‑impact, cross‑cutting initiatives that benefit the entire engineering organization, such as service‑to‑service authentication systems, RBAC/authorization frameworks, ultra‑distributed architectures leveraging the company's edge network, API layer improvements, observability infrastructure, and shared services that span our product portfolio.
• Architect and implement security‑critical systems including authentication, authorization, and access control mechanisms that work seamlessly across our distributed infrastructure, ensuring both robust security postures and excellent developer experiences for teams building on these platforms.
• Design and build ultra‑distributed systems that take full advantage of the company's massive global edge network, including edge computing with Workers and Durable Objects, ensuring our services deliver exceptional performance and reliability to users worldwide while managing the complexity of geo‑distributed state and coordination.
• Set architectural standards and technical direction for our Product Platform stack—including Go services, Python pipelines, TypeScript edge computing (the company Workers/Durable Objects), and PostgreSQL data layer—ensuring decisions balance immediate business needs with long‑term scalability, maintainability, and engineering velocity.
• Identify critical technical debt, systemic inefficiencies, and infrastructure gaps across the organization, building business cases and driving consensus among leadership to fund and execute solutions that might otherwise fall through the cracks of product‑focused roadmaps.
• Serve as a technical force multiplier by embedding with tiger teams or product groups that need deep infrastructure expertise, providing architectural leadership, hands‑on implementation where needed, and ensuring projects ship with production‑grade reliability, security, and performance.
• Mentor and elevate senior engineers across the organization through code reviews, architectural discussions, and technical design reviews, establishing patterns and practices for distributed systems, security, and edge computing that raise the bar for engineering excellence throughout the company.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge, and Experience

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated history of leading complex, organization‑wide technical initiatives that delivered measurable improvements to system performance, reliability, security, developer productivity, or engineering culture.
• Deep expertise in building distributed systems and production infrastructure at scale, with proficiency in Go and strong working knowledge of Python/TypeScript; proven ability to make sound architectural decisions for systems that span multiple data centers, regions, or edge locations.
• Strong understanding of authentication, authorization, and security fundamentals including experience designing and implementing service‑to‑service authentication systems, RBAC/permission models, identity management, or similar security‑critical infrastructure.
• Extensive experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases at scale, including advanced optimization techniques, replication strategies, and understanding the tradeoffs of distributed data storage and consistency models.
• Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without direct authority, including driving consensus on technical decisions across multiple teams, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing architectural patterns that are widely adopted across an organization.
• Exceptional ability to navigate ambiguous problem spaces, identify the highest‑impact technical work, and drive projects autonomously from conception through adoption—balancing pragmatic execution with long‑term technical excellence.
• Please be prepared to discuss specific examples of organization‑wide technical initiatives you've led, particularly distributed systems or security infrastructure, their measurable business impact, and how you influenced technical direction across multiple teams.

Nice to Have Skills

• Deep experience with the company's developer platform, particularly the company Workers, Durable Objects, and architecting ultra‑distributed applications for edge computing environments at global scale.
• Previous experience as a Principal Engineer, Staff+ engineer, or technical leader on platform, infrastructure, or task force teams that operate outside traditional product roadmaps with a focus on enabling engineering organizations.
• Proven expertise in building developer platforms, service mesh architectures, zero‑trust security systems, API gateways, or other foundational distributed infrastructure that significantly improved enginee