Principal Engineer – AI Creative Tools & Real-Time Collab

Pika; Palo Alto, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

Health benefits

Monthly stipends

Company retreats

Collaborative culture

Job summary

Pika in Palo Alto, CA, seeks a Principal Product Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for user-facing systems. You will guide the engineering direction for features serving millions of creators—from intuitive UIs and collaboration tools to real-time interactions and generative AI experiences.

You’ll work with product, design, and engineering leadership to deliver robust, scalable, and delightful experiences, taking ideas from strategy to launch and ongoing iteration,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial time in senior/principal engineering and product-focused roles.
• Proven track record leading design, execution, and scaling of high-impact web or mobile products (React, TypeScript, Node.js, Go, or similar).
• Demonstrated strategy and execution in building robust, user-centric features for creative applications.
• Comprehensive expertise in systems design: distributed systems, scalable APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP).
• Experience across the stack, including ML/AI infrastructure (Python, GPU-backed workflows).
• Excellent communication and leadership skills; able to influence across disciplines and build consensus.

Responsibilities

• Own and define the architecture and technical strategy for Pika’s web and multi-platform products.
• Spearhead the development of real-time collaboration capabilities, messaging, and live multi-user interactions.
• Drive product features from ideation through scoping, development, launch, and continuous improvement.
• Integrate complex generative AI workflows (LLMs, models, agentic tools) into creative tooling.
• Partner with product and design leaders to deliver groundbreaking, accessible creative workflows.
• Champion technical excellence through high standards, architecture reviews, mentorship, and proposals.
• Oversee and improve cross-service metrics, tracing, and observability for critical product features.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Node.js

Go

Python

Web development

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Postgres

Redis

Job description

Pika in Palo Alto, CA, seeks a Principal Product Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for user-facing systems. You will guide the engineering direction for features serving millions of creators—from intuitive UIs and collaboration tools to real-time interactions and generative AI experiences.

You’ll work with product, design, and engineering leadership to deliver robust, scalable, and delightful experiences, taking ideas from strategy to launch and ongoing iteration,