Contract-to-Hire Principal Engineer – AI Platform

Eliassen Group; Raleigh (NC); Remote; USD 124,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401k with company matching

Life insurance

Job summary

Eliassen Group seeks a hands-on Principal Engineer to shape our onboarding platform and drive architectural decisions in a remote, contract-to-hire role. You will code daily, influence product strategy, and embed AI capabilities across the platform while collaborating with Engineering, Product, Customer Success, and Sales.

You will mentor teams, evaluate emerging technologies, and design scalable SaaS architectures, with a focus on security, reliability, and long-term maintainability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building production SaaS platforms.
• Experience in staff/principal/lead engineering roles.
• Strong architectural design in cloud-native environments.
• Ability to influence technical direction across teams.
• Experience partnering with product and business stakeholders.
• Balance between technical excellence and business priorities.
• Proficiency with Go, React, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, cloud-native systems.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive architectural direction for the platform.
• Make strategic technical decisions on scalability, reliability, security, and innovation.
• Guide platform evolution prioritizing speed, simplicity, and maintainability.
• Identify technical risks early and mitigate them.
• Write production code daily and contribute to features.
• Design, build, and support scalable SaaS applications.
• Lead complex customer and platform initiative implementations.
• Mentor teams and participate in design/code reviews.
• Develop AI strategy and AI-powered capabilities using modern LLMs.
• Create proofs of concept for customer-facing AI use cases.
• Architect solutions for customer-managed AI (BYOM/BYOK).
• Evaluate new technologies and AI infrastructure patterns.
• Engage with Product Leadership and Sales to align on customer onboarding.

Skills

Go

React

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

Distributed systems

AI/LLM integration

Tools

OpenAI/Anthropic platforms

MCP concepts

Vector databases

Job description

Eliassen Group seeks a hands-on Principal Engineer to shape our onboarding platform and drive architectural decisions in a remote, contract-to-hire role. You will code daily, influence product strategy, and embed AI capabilities across the platform while collaborating with Engineering, Product, Customer Success, and Sales.

You will mentor teams, evaluate emerging technologies, and design scalable SaaS architectures, with a focus on security, reliability, and long-term maintainability.