Principal Engineer
DeepRunner AI
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
Qualifications
- 10+ years of hands-on software engineering with a track record of shipping production enterprise systems.
- Still writes production-quality code and conducts code reviews.
- Strong architectural judgment with the ability to spot over-engineering and under-engineering.
Responsibilities
- Set architectural direction across products and platforms.
- Write, ship, and review code regularly.
- Mentor and grow the engineers around you.
- Ensure the highest standards in architecture and development.
Skills
Job description
We are seeking a Principal Engineer who sets technical direction by example. An architect who still writes code, reviews code, and makes the engineers around them better. This is not a role for someone who has moved away from the keyboard. It is a role for an engineer who has shipped production systems at scale, knows the millionsmall detailsthat separate a demo from a product customers depend on.
You will set architectural direction across our products and platforms. You will partner with our existing engineers, challenge their thinking, and ensure the systems we build are the best-architected they can be — simple, modular, resilient, and built to evolve. You will spend real time in code reviews, in design documents, and at the keyboard yourself. And you will invest heavily in the engineers around you: the strength of the team you grow is the truest measure of your success in this role.
You understand that AI has fundamentally changed the job of a Principal Engineer — for the better. The best practitioners today ship more, review more, prototype more, and mentor more because they treat AI as an amplifier, not a threat. You will bring that mindset to DeepRunner, and you will help the rest of the engineering organization get better at it.
- Set architectural direction across our products and platforms. Drive the decisions that matter: service boundaries, data models, API contracts, and the shape of the systems we will still be livingwith in three years.
- Write code. Ship code. Review code. Your tenure here will be measured in commits and architecture decisions, not slide decks.
- Raise the bar on code reviews. Every review is a teaching moment. Define the standards, enforce them, and explain the “why” so they stick.
- Mentor and grow the engineers around you. Develop your peers and your juniors into stronger engineers. This is a core responsibilityofthe role, not a side activity.
- Ship production software with full production responsibility: edge cases, failure modes, backwards compatibility, migrations, observability hooks.
- Always insist on the highest standards spanning architecture, development, deployment, operational excellence
- Use AI in your daily work the way a modern Principal Engineer should: to prototype faster, review more code, explore more alternatives, and multiply your own reach.
- 10+ years of hands-on software engineering with a cleartrack recordof shipping production enterprise systems that customers depend on.
- Exemplary practitioner: still writes production-quality code, still does code reviews, and takes pride in it.
- Strong architectural judgment. Can design systems that are simple, modular, and resilient. Can spot over-engineering and under-engineering with equal confidence. Can explain trade-offs in plain language.
- Proven history of mentoring and developing other engineers — not just shipping personal work. Concrete examples of engineers whose growth you meaningfully accelerated.
- Deep grasp of the “million details” of shipping production software: edge cases, failure modes, backwards compatibility, migrations, zero-downtime changes.
- Active engagement with open source. Meaningful contributions to OSS projects, not just consumption. OSS is how great engineers learn from and teach each other, and we want that culture in-house.
- Fluent with modern AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar). You understand that AI has changed the job of a Principal Engineer for the better, and you can articulate exactly how.
- Excellent written and spoken communication. Clarity is a core engineering skill at DeepRunner, not a soft skill.
- Startup experience. You have worked where you had to build, ship, and operate with a small team and a short runway.
- Track recordof introducing architectural patterns or engineering practices that outlasted your tenure at the organizations where you worked.
- Comfortable working closely with distributed teams across geographies and time zones.
- Experience with AI/ML systems in production: LLM integrations, RAG pipelines, or agent architectures.
DeepRunnerAI is building the future of SMB software. Our flagship product combines modern business platforms with AI-powered automation to help SMBs operate more efficiently. We believe AI should empower human workers by handling repetitive tasks so people can focus on strategic thinking, creativity, and complex problem-solving.
We are a fast-growing startup with teams across Silicon Valley, Athens, and Delhi. Our culture is rooted in #Day1 and #OneTeam principles. We offer:
- Competitive salary, equity options, and benefits
- Opportunities for professional growth and development
- A dynamic and supportive work environment
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