Principal Engineer - Applications

Weave; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Weave is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the multi-year technical vision for its Applications Fellowship, spanning Payments, Scheduling, Forms, and RCM.

You will lead cross-team architecture, mentor engineers, and drive strategic initiatives across hybrid/remote US teams, focusing on scale, reliability, and best practices.

This role emphasizes influence over authority and requires 15+ years of software experience and a proven ability to translate technical tradeoffs into business value.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering with progressive technical leadership.
• Proven track record leading cross-team technical initiatives with measurable outcomes.
• Ability to influence without authority and translate tradeoffs into business terms.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture handling hundreds of millions of transactions.
• Experience with event streaming and messaging at scale (Kafka, Pub/Sub).
• Strong background in scalable data stores (PostgreSQL, Vitess, Spanner, NoSQL).
• Operational experience with cloud-native infra on GCP or AWS, including Kubernetes and IaC.
• Solid backend foundation (Go preferred; Python, Java, or C#).

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-year technical vision for Payments, Scheduling, Forms, Business Experience and RCM platforms.
• Drive architectural coherence across multiple teams, managing dependencies and debt.
• Lead technical due diligence for major initiatives, build-vs-buy decisions, and migrations.
• Mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across the fellowship and improve architectural thinking.
• Build organizational capability through design reviews, standards, and guidance.
• Partner with Engineering Directors, Staff Engineers, and Product leadership on strategy.

Skills

Technical leadership

Architectural vision

Cross-team collaboration

Influence without authority

Strategic thinking

Tools

Kafka

PostgreSQL

Vitess

Spanner

GCP

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Weave is a leading all-in-one customer experience and payments software platform for small and medium-sized healthcare businesses (SMBs). We are seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as a technical cornerstone of our Applications Fellowship—the domain responsible for key patient-facing and practice-facing features, including RCM Experiences (Payments and Insurance Verification), Scheduling, Forms, Team Chat, Task Center, and Mobile App features for 40,000+ healthcare practices. This is not a role for someone seeking a larger individual contributor scope; it's a role for someone who shapes technical strategy at the company level, influences architectural decisions across multiple teams, and solves the hardest problems that span organizational boundaries.

As a Principal Engineer, you will own the multi-year technical vision for the applications domain, including core systems for Payments and Scheduling, ensuring architectural decisions position Weave for long-term competitive advantage. You'll partner with Engineering Directors, Staff Engineers, and Product leadership to ensure our technical decisions position Weave for long-term competitive advantage. Your success will be measured not by your personal output, but by how the organization's technical capability grows through your influence, mentorship, and strategic leadership.

This role requires someone with impeccable technical judgment, the ability to operate in ambiguity, and the character to lead through influence rather than authority. You'll be a visible leader whose approach to problem-solving becomes the template for how engineering operates at Weave.

The Applications Fellowship encompasses multiple engineering teams responsible for building and scaling our user-facing products: Payments, Scheduling, Forms, Business Experience, Mobile Apps, and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). You will work across these teams as a technical leader, partnering with Engineering Managers, Staff Engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders to drive architectural coherence and strategic technical initiatives.

This position is hybrid (Lehi, UT) or Remote (US-based).

Reports to: Sr Director of Engineering.

What You Will Own

Technical Strategy & Architecture

• Own the multi-year technical vision for Payments, Scheduling, Forms, Business Experience and RCM application platforms, ensuring architectural decisions position Weave for scale, reliability, and competitive advantage

• Drive architectural coherence across multiple teams, identifying and resolving cross-system dependencies and technical debt at the platform level

• Lead technical due diligence for major initiatives, including build-vs-buy decisions, vendor evaluations, and platform migrations

Cross-Team Problem Solving

• Identify and solve company-level technical problems that span organizational boundaries—the problems that are too complex, too cross-cutting, or too ambiguous for any single team to own

• Compile information across systems, teams, and projects to develop comprehensive solutions with extensive validation, rollback, and testing plans

• Forecast project costs in time, money, and opportunity cost; account for impacts across the business

Strategic Technical Leadership

• Monitor the industry landscape, anticipate where high-scale customer experience and transactional platforms are heading, and ensure Weave stays ahead of the curve

• Cut through noise and hype to identify genuine strategic value; advocate for and lead key initiatives that prepare Weave for emerging challenges

• Shape company-wide standards for engineering excellence, observability, and reliability in distributed systems

Mentorship & Organizational Capability

• Actively mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across the fellowship, developing the next generation of technical leaders

• Elevate architectural thinking across teams through design reviews, documentation standards, and hands-on guidance

• Build organizational capability that persists beyond your individual contributions

What You Will Need to Accomplish the Job

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with progressive technical leadership scope

• Track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives that delivered measurable business outcomes

• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, build consensus across organizational boundaries, and translate technical tradeoffs into business terms

• Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture, including building and operating services that handle hundreds of millions of transactions and terabytes of data

• Proven experience with event streaming and messaging infrastructure (Kafka, Google Pub/Sub, or similar) at significant scale

• Strong background in scalable data stores—both relational (PostgreSQL at scale, Vitess, Spanner) and NoSQL (Bigtable, Redis, etc.)

• Operational experience with cloud-native infrastructure on GCP or AWS, including Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and highly available system design

• Solid backend engineering foundation (Go preferred; Python, Java, or C# acceptable)

What Will Make Us Love You

• Background in compliance-heavy environments (healthcare, fintech) with experience navigating regulatory requirements in technical design

• Experience shaping AI/ML infrastructure or integrating AI capabilities into production systems

• History of external technical leadership: open source contributions, conference speaking, or published technical writing

• Strong opinions, loosely held—you bring conviction to technical discussions while remaining genuinely open to better ideas

• Expertise in data platform architecture: streaming pipelines, data lakes, warehouses, or distributed analytics

Employment with Weave is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check, conducted in accordance with applicable laws.

At Weave, we use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help us work more efficiently and create a smoother candidate experience. AI may assist with things like writing job descriptions, scheduling interviews, or reviewing applications against job-related criteria. For additional information, please review the External AI Policy Statement available on our Careers page.

Weave is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where all individuals are valued and supported. We welcome anyone who is hungry to learn, problem-solve and progress regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.