Principal Backend Engineer, Enterprise Data & APIs

Autodesk; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 139,000 - 249,000; Full time

Job summary

Autodesk's Enterprise Data Management (EDM) organization seeks a Principal Software Engineer - Backend to drive architecture for large-scale backend and distributed systems. You will anchor high-autonomy technical decisions, shape service design, and ensure reliable, evolvable data services across teams.

As a senior IC, you will mentor engineers, set standards, and partner with product and platform leaders to translate ambiguous problems into concrete technical solutions while maintaining a

Qualifications

• 10+ years in backend and distributed systems engineering.
• Experience building enterprise platform services used by many teams.
• Strong AWS, Python, API design, and backend integration skills.
• Proven ownership of mission-critical systems and long-term maintainability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Provide principal-level technical leadership across multiple backend teams.
• Design and evolve scalable backend systems and APIs for enterprise use.
• Lead distributed, event-driven system design with strong fault tolerance.
• Establish API standards, versioning, and consumer experience guidelines.
• Drive operational excellence: observability, incident response, and post-incident learning.
• Mentor engineers and influence architecture across domains.
• Partner with product, data, and platform leaders to translate problems into actionable solutions.
• Remain hands-on in high-impact design and implementation work.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Python

AWS

API design

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kafka

Kinesis

CI/CD

Job description

Autodesk's Enterprise Data Management (EDM) organization seeks a Principal Software Engineer - Backend to drive architecture for large-scale backend and distributed systems. You will anchor high-autonomy technical decisions, shape service design, and ensure reliable, evolvable data services across teams.

As a senior IC, you will mentor engineers, set standards, and partner with product and platform leaders to translate ambiguous problems into concrete technical solutions while maintaining a