Principal AI Platform Engineer for Creative Tools

Sarah Smith Fund; Palo Alto, Northern (CA, KY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Significant equity

Comprehensive health benefits

Monthly stipends

Company retreats

Collaborative office culture

Job summary

Pika is hiring a Principal Product Engineer to steer the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for user-facing systems. You will lead the engineering direction for features serving millions of creators—from intuitive UIs and collaboration tools to real-time interactions and advanced generative AI.

You’ll partner with product and design to deliver scalable, delightful experiences. In this senior role you’ll shape architectural standards, mentor engineers, and drive end-to-end delivery from

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with senior/principal roles.
• Experience designing high-impact web/mobile products (React, TS, Node.js, Go, or similar).
• Proven track record building user-centric features for creative apps.
• Distributed systems and cloud infrastructure expertise (AWS/GCP).
• Experience across stack including ML/AI infrastructure (Python, GPU workflows).
• Strong product intuition and strategic mindset—driven by user and business needs.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and technical strategy for web and multi-platform products.
• Spearhead real-time collaboration capabilities and live multi-user interactions.
• Drive features from ideation through scoping, development, launch, and iteration.
• Integrate complex generative AI workflows into creative tooling.
• Partner with product and design leadership to deliver accessible creative workflows.
• Mentor engineers and lead architecture reviews to elevate code quality.
• Oversee cross-service metrics, tracing, and observability for critical features.

Skills

React experience

TypeScript

System design

Cross-functional leadership

ML/AI infrastructure

Tools

React

Node.js

Go

Python

AWS/GCP

Job description

Pika is hiring a Principal Product Engineer to steer the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for user-facing systems. You will lead the engineering direction for features serving millions of creators—from intuitive UIs and collaboration tools to real-time interactions and advanced generative AI.

You’ll partner with product and design to deliver scalable, delightful experiences. In this senior role you’ll shape architectural standards, mentor engineers, and drive end-to-end delivery from