Principal Engineer

ThoughtSpot; Mountain View, Chicago (CA, IL); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

ThoughtSpot is seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as the technical North Star for large-scale platform modernization. You will guide the core platform evolution into a high-performance, multi-tenant SaaS ecosystem, driving architectural migrations and shaping long-term strategy.

You will own the roadmap for multi-tenancy, scale a large distributed system, and mentor senior engineers while delivering production-ready migrations with minimal downtime.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of backend engineering experience with leadership exposure.

Responsibilities

• Architectural Overhaul: Lead transition from monoliths to a decoupled service-oriented architecture.
• Scale for SaaS: Own multi-tenancy roadmap and ensure isolation and performance SLAs for thousands of tenants.
• Boost Developer Velocity: Create patterns, libraries, and tooling to accelerate code shipping.
• Production-First Engineering: Oversee end-to-end rollout with zero-downtime migrations.
• Technical Mentorship: Elevate engineering excellence and influence long-term tech strategy.

Skills

Backend engineering

Principal/Lead Architect

Multi-tenant systems

Java/Go/C++

Kubernetes/Kafka/gRPC

Production deployments

Stakeholder leadership

Tools

Kubernetes

Kafka

gRPC

Job description

ThoughtSpot is a Data & AI platform that helps companies turn data into enterprise advantage. We're Gartner MQ leaders with more than 1,000 customers globally and offices in Mountain View, Chicago, London, Bangalore, Sydney, and Tokyo.

About the role:

ThoughtSpot is disrupting the BI industry with search and AI-driven insights. As we scale our SaaS offering, our core platform must evolve from its foundational roots into a high-performance, hyper-scale, multi-tenant ecosystem.

As a Principal Engineer at ThoughtSpot, you will serve as the technical North Star for large-scale platform modernisation. You will lead the evolution of the core platform into a high-performance, hyper-scale, multi-tenant SaaS ecosystem, driving major architectural migrations and shaping long-term technical strategy.

What you’ll do:

• Architectural Overhaul: Lead the strategic transition from legacy monolithic components to a decoupled, service-oriented architecture.
• Scale for SaaS: Own the roadmap for multi-tenancy, ensuring our infrastructure can handle thousands of concurrent enterprise customers with strict isolation and performance SLAs.
• Boost Developer Velocity: Identify bottlenecks in our internal development lifecycle. You’ll build the patterns, libraries, and tooling that allow hundreds of other engineers to ship code faster and more safely.
• Production-First Engineering: It’s not "done" until it’s at scale in production. You will oversee the end-to-end rollout of major system changes, ensuring zero-downtime migrations.
• Technical Mentorship: Elevate the bar for engineering excellence across the organization. You’ll mentor Staff and Senior engineers and influence the broader technical strategy.

What you will bring:

• 15+ years of backend engineering experience, including 3+ years in a Principal or Lead Architect role.
• Proven experience leading major architectural transformations (for example, monolith-to-microservices) and delivering them successfully to production.
• Deep expertise in multi-tenant systems , distributed architectures, and cloud-native design (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Successfully demonstrated scaling a large and complex system
• Strong proficiency in high-performance languages such as Java, Go, or C++, and experience with modern infrastructure tools including Kubernetes, Kafka, and gRPC .
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and lead cross-functional teams through complex technical change.
• Passion for building scalable, elegant systems and working deeply within complex codebases.

In-Office at ThoughtSpot

Spotters are expected in-office 3+ days per week to be part of the energy of their local team. Momentum compounds when we're in the room together with faster decisions, sharper problem-solving, and the kind of peer learning that doesn't happen over a screen. Being in-office is our default way of working, with flexibility available where it's genuinely needed.

Remote Work at ThoughtSpot

This role is available as a remote position.

Onsite Work at ThoughtSpot

Spotters assigned to an office are encouraged to experience the energy of their local office with an in-office expectation of 5 days per week.

About ThoughtSpot

The world’s most innovative companies turn to ThoughtSpot’s AI-Powered Analytics to put data in the hands of everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline. With simple, natural language search and AI, anyone can ask questions, discover insights, and act with confidence. Unlike legacy tools that sacrifice performance for complexity, ThoughtSpot is intuitively designed for every business user while being built to handle the most complex, large-scale data, wherever it resides. This unique combination of speed and simplicity is why enterprise leaders trust ThoughtSpot to transform decision‑making into a truly data‑driven culture.

At ThoughtSpot, we’re a curious, data‑driven bunch. We believe the world works better when everyone has access to facts. That’s why we build products that make asking and answering data questions as natural as having a conversation.

Mandatory and Required Skills for All ThoughtSpot Roles

Spotters are expected to demonstrate AI literacy and workflow integration to include to ability to:

• Comfortably and confidently integrate artificial intelligence into their daily workflow to increase productivity and quality.
• Hands‑on experience to leverage AI tools (industry‑leading LLMs) to increase productivity, automate routine tasks, and improve work quality.
• Speak to the experience of using AI for research, content creation, and document summarization while maintaining ownership of judgment and final decisions.
• Write effective prompts to get the most accurate and creative results from AI tools.

Spotters are expected to exemplify these key traits and AI Mindset:

• Curiosity in exploring new AI tools
• Adaptability to quickly learn and implement new, emerging AI technologies
• Critical thinking to know when to identify when AI should be used versus when human judgement is necessary

This combination of curiosity, adaptability, and discernment defines the AI mindset, and it’s required for every role at ThoughtSpot.

AI Mindset for All Spotters

At ThoughtSpot, we believe AI is a necessary and essential part of how we work. Every role, across every team, is expected to be fluent and comfortable with using AI to do their best work.

All Spotters are expected to experiment with ThoughtSpot’s AI tools (like Spotter and SpotterViz) and leading industry LLMs to streamline workflows, enhance output, and uncover new insights. Whether drafting content, analyzing data, or summarizing documents, AI is a daily partner. We value curiosity, openness to learning, and thoughtful application of AI to create real value. Training and resources are provided so every Spotter can confidently create with AI.

ThoughtSpot for All

At ThoughtSpot, diverse teams build better products. Complex data problems need many perspectives, not just one. We welcome different backgrounds, identities, and experiences, and we work to create a place where everyone can be themselves and do their best work.

What Makes ThoughtSpot a Great Place to Work?

ThoughtSpot is the Agentic Analytics Platform that empowers every enterprise to transform insights into action, on a mission to make the world more fact driven. We hire people with unique identities, backgrounds, and perspectives - this balance-for-the-better philosophy is key to our success. When paired with our culture of Trust, Customer Obsession, Innovation and Intensity, ThoughtSpot cultivates a respectful culture that pushes norms to create world-class products.