Growth Engineering, Principal Software Developer

Workiva Canada ULC; Iowa (LA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Workiva Canada ULC is seeking a Principal Software Developer to lead architecture, strategy, and delivery of AI-powered, agent-driven experiences on the Workiva platform. You will guide multi-team initiatives, balance hands-on work with leadership, and shape scalable systems in a fast-evolving product area.

Ideal candidates have 8+ years of software leadership, strong AI development experience, and a track record of delivering high-impact outcomes across complex domains.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling complex software systems.
• Experience using AI as a primary development collaborator with strong quality for AI output.
• Proven success leading large, cross‑pillar technical initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Deliver outcomes across platform modernization, product evolution, and new product bets.
• Lead design, development, and scaling of AI-powered applications and agent-driven experiences.
• Define and drive technical strategy across large multi-team initiatives.
• Mentor Staff+ engineers and align technical decisions with business outcomes.
• Create durable runbooks, decision logs, and tests for handoff and evolution.

Skills

AI experience

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Architecture judgment

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree or PhD (optional)

Job description

The Growth Engineering team is focused on bringing new AI-driven product ideas to life—from early experimentation through to scalable, customer-facing solutions. Engineers on this team work across the full product lifecycle, balancing rapid iteration with thoughtful system design. As a Principal Software Developer, you’ll define architecture, guide technical strategy, and make high-impact contributions to products that are still taking shape. We’re looking for a Principal Software Developer who can lead across complex technical work, leading the design, development, and scaling of AI-powered applications and agent-driven experiences built on the Workiva platform. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives at the intersection of hands-on building and technical leadership. Someone who can navigate ambiguity, drive architectural decisions, and influence across teams to deliver meaningful business outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Deliver outcomes
• Partner with engineering teams to co‑deliver complex work across platform modernization, product evolution, and new product bets. Adapt your technical approach, planning style, and delivery strategy to match the needs of the work.
• Use AI-native development methods to build automation, validation, and engineering harnesses that improve speed, quality, and leverage.
• Define and drive technical strategy
• Lead technical strategy across large, multi‑team initiatives with long‑term impact.
• Define and evolve system boundaries across complex domains, with a focus on clean interfaces and scalability.
• Identify and remove bottlenecks in performance, data flow, reliability, and architecture.
• Lead exploration, prototyping, and validation for ambiguous technical problems.
• Partner with cross‑functional peers on disaster recovery planning, testing, and optimization.
• Design AI-driven systems
• Design systems that enable autonomous or semi‑autonomous engineering workflows.
• Build context‑aware infrastructure that connects code, documentation, and systems to AI tooling.
• Develop guardrails such as validation layers, static analysis, and automation hooks to ensure safe and reliable AI‑assisted development.
• Improve how AI is used across the organization for both effectiveness and efficiency.
• Influence and lead Raise the technical bar by helping teams think bigger and execute better.
• Mentor and challenge Staff+ engineers to expand their scope, judgment, and impact.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to align technical decisions with business outcomes.
• Create durable artifacts such as runbooks, decision logs, and tests that can be handed off and evolved by others.
• Contribute across product domains, bringing context from one area to solve problems in another.

What You'll Need

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling complex software systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field; or 6+ years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 4+ years of experience; or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience using AI as a primary development collaborator, with a strong quality bar for AI‑generated output.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven success leading large, cross‑pillar technical initiatives.
• Track record of working effectively across platform modernization, iterative product development, and greenfield delivery.
• Strong architectural judgment across distributed systems, APIs, and platform design.
• Ability to operate as a force multiplier for other engineers.
• Experience improving engineering testing standards through approaches such as TDD, BDD, load testing, stress testing, chaos testing, invariant testing, or mutation testing.
• Experience building infrastructure that improves engineering velocity and quality at scale.
• Strong background in distributed systems and platform architecture.
• Experience inferring behavioral specifications from existing systems through code, tests, logs, and subject‑matter experts.
• Ability to deliver production‑quality outcomes in a small, time‑boxed team setting.
• Strong written communication skills and a habit of creating durable, useful artifacts.
• A leadership style that empowers others rather than creating dependency.

Travel Requirements & Working Conditions

Up to 15% travel for team jams and internal developer conference

Reliable internet access for any period of time working remotely, not in a Workiva office.

Why Join Workiva

Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world’s most complex organizations. Our AI‑powered platform unifies finance, risk, and sustainability on a single, secure foundation—ensuring data is trusted, traceable, and ready to act on. With an unbroken path from source to output, leaders gain confidence in their numbers, visibility into current and emerging risks, and the ability to move with speed and precision in a constantly changing world. At Workiva, you’ll bring technology to market that executives, boards, and regulators depend on. The work you do here helps organizations navigate uncertainty, maintain trust, and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. If you’re energized by meaningful challenges, inspired by collaborative teams, and motivated to help organizations turn uncertainty into advantage, we’d love to meet you.

Workiva is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe that great minds think differently. We value diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and interests, and we recognize diversity as an important source of intellectual thought, varied perspective, and innovation. Employment decisions are made without regard to age, gender identity, race, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic. Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.

Workiva supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.