Principal Engineer

Docusign; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 202,800 - 327,625; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus plan based on company performance

Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)

Full Health Benefits Plans

Paid Time Off

Paid Parental Leave

Retirement Plans

Learning and Development options

Job summary

A leading e-signature and contract management provider is looking for a Principal Engineer to enhance their Marketing and Enterprise Applications Technology Engineering team. You will shape the long-term technical vision and lead architectural design while mentoring senior engineers. The role emphasizes AI enablement and working with large-scale distributed systems. Ideal candidates bring over 15 years of experience in software engineering, knowledge of modern data platforms, and a proven track record in developing complex architectures.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering with deep expertise in large-scale, data-intensive platforms.
• Experience in AI-adjacent systems and automation.
• Experience with microservices architectures and backend programming languages like Java or Kotlin.

Responsibilities

• Define and guide long-term architecture aligned with company objectives.
• Lead design of AI-enabled capabilities for marketing technology platforms.
• Mentor senior engineers and drive consistency in technology standards.

Skills

Software engineering

Architecture design

AI enablement

Data platforms

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

SQL

NoSQL databases

Kafka

Spark

Hive

Job description

Company Overview

Docusign brings agreements to life. Over 1.5 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people’s lives. With intelligent agreement management, Docusign unleashes business‑critical data that is trapped inside of documents. Until now, these were disconnected from business systems of record, costing businesses time, money, and opportunity. Using Docusign’s Intelligent Agreement Management platform, companies can create, commit, and manage agreements with solutions created by the #1 company in e‑signature and contract lifecycle management (CLM).

What you’ll do

As a Principal Engineer in the Marketing and Enterprise Applications Technology Engineering team, you will own and evolve the long‑term technical vision for marketing, sales, and downstream commerce technology, with a strong emphasis on AI enablement, data platforms, and large‑scale distributed systems with deep marketing technology domain expertise. You will act as a trusted technical advisor to senior leaders, lead architectural design across teams, and remain deeply involved in solving the most complex technical challenges. You will guide teams through architectural decisions, establish engineering standards, and mentor senior engineers, while continuously identifying opportunities where AI, automation, and advanced data systems can unlock step‑function improvements in customer experience and GTM effectiveness.

This position is an individual contributor role reporting to the VP, Applications Engineering.

Responsibility

• Define and steward the long‑term architecture and technical strategy for lifecycle marketing, sales, commerce, and AI technology platforms, ensuring alignment with Docusign’s GTM objectives and future growth.
• Lead the design and adoption of AI‑enabled capabilities, including data pipelines, feature stores, model integration patterns, automation frameworks, and intelligent decisioning systems that power personalization and lifecycle marketing.
• Own and influence the end‑to‑end architecture of complex, distributed lifecycle marketing, sales, and commerce business systems, emphasizing scalability, reliability, security, and extensibility to support high data volumes and rapid innovation.
• Partner closely with senior engineering, product, marketing, sales, success, and analytics leaders to guide architectural decisions, communicate tradeoffs, and align technical direction with business priorities.
• Provide technical leadership across the broader GTM ecosystem, helping teams understand technology specific to marketing domain, platform capabilities, constraints, and opportunities, and ensuring cohesive integration across systems and workflows.
• Establish and uphold technical standards, design principles, and best practices across teams, driving consistency, quality, and operational rigor in how platforms are built and evolved.
• Mentor senior and lead engineers, elevate technical decision‑making across the organization, and model strong ownership, thoughtful design, and long‑term architectural thinking.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, AI methodologies, and architectural patterns, guiding responsible adoption to keep Docusign’s marketing technology ecosystem modern, flexible, and future‑ready.

Job Designation

Hybrid: Employee divides their time between in‑office and remote work. Access to an office location is required. Minimum 2 days per week; may vary by team but will be a weekly in‑office expectation.

Positions at Docusign are assigned a job designation of either In Office, Hybrid or Remote and are specific to the role/job. Preferred job designations are not guaranteed when changing positions within Docusign. Docusign reserves the right to change a position’s job designation depending on business needs and as permitted by local law.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, marketing, sales, commerce technical domain knowledge, with deep expertise in building and operating large‑scale, data‑intensive platforms to scale for volume, velocity, variety of data, campaign events, lead generation.
• Experience designing and evolving complex distributed architectures used by multiple teams and mission‑critical business functions.
• Experience in AI‑adjacent systems, including data platforms, automation, model integration, or intelligent decisioning at scale.
• Experience with microservices architectures, containerization, and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience in backend programming languages such as Java or Kotlin, Python, or Node.js.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, and distributed data and streaming platforms such as Kafka, Spark, and Hive.
• Cloud platform experience across AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying AI and machine learning concepts to marketing, personalization, sales, success, or customer engagement use cases.
• Strong understanding of data governance, privacy, and compliance frameworks, particularly in enterprise or regulated environments.
• Experience operating within agile organizations while maintaining long‑term architectural integrity.
• A history of driving cross‑team technical initiatives that materially improve platform scalability, reliability, or business impact.
• Outstanding communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders and guide alignment across organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior technical and business leaders through clear architectural thinking and executive‑level communication.

Wage Transparency

Pay for this position is based on a number of factors including geographic location and may vary depending on job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.

California: $202,800.00 – $327,625.00 base salary.

Benefits and Compensation

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre‑established sales goals. Non‑Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).
• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region.
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement.
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment.
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions.
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements.
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life‑changing events.

Work Authorization Notice

Applicants must already be authorized to work in the United States on a full‑time, permanent basis without the need for current or future sponsorship.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Docusign is an Equal Opportunity Employer and makes hiring decisions based on experience, skill, aptitude and a can‑do approach. We will not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, physical or mental disability, registered domestic partner status, caregiver status, marital status, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected category.

Accommodation

Docusign is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need such an accommodation, or a religious accommodation, during the application process, please contact us at [e-mail].

Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice and other informational notices are provided on the company website.