66637199766 - Principal Engineer - 22015

Somewhere; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Somewhere is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead engineering and infrastructure as a true hands-on player-coach. You will shape architecture, drive AI-enabled SDLC, and mentor a distributed team while the CEO focuses on clients and growth.

You will own critical areas, including virtualization, Linux server administration, and cross-functional technical decisions. This role offers remote work with international coordination and potential compensation growth as scope expands.

Qualifications

• Proven Systems Ownership: Experience designing, operating, and debugging production systems with real failures.
• Deep Systems & Infrastructure Skills: Advanced Linux server/network admin, virtualization, end-to-end ownership.
• AI-Native Engineering Depth: Hands-on AI coding agents and AI-assisted workflows with practical opinions.
• Programming Depth & Mobile Awareness: Strong coding skills, debugging complex codebases, Flutter/Unity familiarity.
• Builder's Temperament: Self-directed, measures success by production reliability.
• Domain Bonus (Nice to Have): Experience in online gaming, ad-tech, or mobile attribution is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own system architecture and how apps, infrastructure, and tooling fit together.
• Lead AI-Driven Software Factory SDLC with agentic workflows and data integrations.
• Consolidate assets, accounts, sites, and metrics into a unified operations dashboard.
• Hardening virtualization environments and infrastructure across self-hosted and distributed systems.
• Set engineering standards, review code, and coach the team.

Job description

Principal Engineer (Software Factory & Infrastructure)

Position Title: Principal Engineer

Department: Engineering & Infrastructure

Reports To: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Employment Type: Full-Time Remote Contractor

Schedule Alignment: Core hours align with US Pacific Time (PT), with occasional evening flexibility to coordinate across Asia-Pacific operations.

Target Locations: Remote (Latin America [LATAM])

Position Overview

Our CEO has served as the company's sole architect, senior engineer, and week-to-week technical decision-maker since inception. Having built a strong foundation, technical leadership is now the primary bottleneck to company scaling. We are hiring our most senior technical builder: the person who owns how things get built here, allowing the CEO to focus on clients and growth.

This is a true "player-coach" role. You will spend the majority of your time building, setting the technical bar for a small, distributed development team through architecture decisions, standards, code review, and leading by example—not through heavy managerial machinery. The CEO owns client relationships and product strategy; you get the keys to everything technical.

Where this goes: as you deliver, your scope grows and your compensation is reviewed with it.

Key Areas of Ownership

• System Architecture: Own the overall shape of our technical estate—how our apps, infrastructure, and tooling fit together—making ongoing judgment calls between speed-to-market and long-term stability.
• AI-Driven Software Factory (SDLC): Rebuild our software development lifecycle around AI coding agents so our portfolio of mobile applications (Flutter, Unity) ships faster with less rework. Build agentic workflows with scaffolded checks at every stage, capitalizing on shared app architectures. Own conversion tracking, attribution stacks (AppsFlyer), and integrations passing data to client platforms for LTV attribution.
• Central Management Platform: Consolidate currently fragmented systems, assets, ad accounts, sites, credentials, spend tracking, and uptime metrics into a single unified dashboard that runs the operational business.
• Infrastructure & Reliability: Build out and harden our virtualization environments (Proxmox), own Linux server administration across self-hosted and distributed infrastructure, and improve monitoring and uptime. A concrete early win is already scoped: consolidating our sprawling per-site hosting onto a lean bare-metal footprint behind a CDN, cutting a six-figure annual bill roughly in half.
• Technical Direction & Decision-making: Establish engineering standards, perform code reviews, and provide technical coaching to elevate team output. Lead recurring technical decision-making calls and participate directly in vetting and hiring future engineering talent.

What We Are Looking For

• Proven Systems Ownership: Experience designing, operating, and debugging production systems through real failures with no higher technical escalation point. We care about what you’ve owned and delivered.
• Deep Systems & Infrastructure Skills: Advanced Linux server and network administration, virtualization experience (Proxmox, VMware, or similar), and the confidence to own infrastructure end-to-end.
• AI-Native Engineering Depth: Hands-on experience building with AI coding agents and AI-assisted workflows (Claude, Cursor, custom agents) with earned, practical opinions on where they excel and where they fail.
• Programming Depth & Mobile Awareness: Real programming depth in modern languages with the ability to debug complex codebases (including AI-generated code). Experience with mobile app development (Flutter or Unity) or the technical depth to pick it up rapidly.
• Builder's Temperament: A self-directed operator who closes feedback loops, values documented systems over heroics, and measures success by what is reliably running in production.
• Domain Bonus (Nice to Have): Background in regulated online gaming, sports betting, ad-tech, performance marketing, or mobile attribution stacks is a strong asset, but not required.

How We Work

We are small by design. We believe a lean team of highly capable engineers, solid systems, and serious deployment of AI tools outperforms large organizations. We optimize for leverage, clear documented systems, high autonomy, and direct collaboration with the founders.