Principal Software Engineer

codeforamerica; United States; Remote; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote in United States

40 hours per week

Paid holidays

Sick time

Parental leave

Sabbatical after five years

401(k) with employer match

Medical coverage with no-cost option

Professional development stipend

Phone reimbursement

Job summary

Code for America is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to define technical standards and practices, guiding high‑quality software delivery across multiple teams building public services. This senior, hands-on role combines deep technical expertise with broad influence, tackling the most ambiguous, high-leverage problems.

Reporting to the Director or Senior Director of Product Engineering, the role is remote within the United States, with travel up to 10%.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience as a senior or staff software engineer working on production systems at scale.
• Ability to set technical direction across teams, including architecture and data-modeling for multi-service systems.
• Strong written communication with documentation and technical decision records for cross-team use.
• Experience mentoring engineers and elevating the technical judgment of those around you.
• Comfort weighing competing concerns such as delivery speed, maintainability, and feasibility.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship features that help people navigate public services more easily, taking on the hardest problems in the domain and modeling the standard other engineers build toward.
• Drive solutions to ambiguous or undefined technical problems, weighing tradeoffs across competing priorities at discipline-wide scale.
• Own architecture and data-modeling decisions for systems spanning multiple services or teams, balancing speed against maintainability and pragmatism against ideal outcomes.
• Iterate to validate approaches, then engineer durable, reusable capabilities such as shared services, libraries, and AI-enabled components that other teams can build on.
• Produce documentation, technical decision records, and learning materials that engineers across multiple teams rely on.
• Mentor staff and senior engineers on technical judgment and practice, and create conditions for them to grow into unfamiliar problem spaces.

Skills

Senior level software engineering

Architecture & data modeling

Cross-team collaboration

Technical mentorship

Technical documentation

Job description

Role overview

A Principal Software Engineer is needed to define the technical standards and practices that an engineering discipline builds on, driving reliable, high-quality software delivery across multiple teams and projects that make public services more accessible and effective. This is a senior, hands-on role that pairs deep technical expertise with cross-team influence, framing and solving the most ambiguous and highest-leverage problems ahead of any single team's roadmap. The position reports to the Director or Senior Director of Product Engineering and is remote within the United States, with travel expected at no more than 10%.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship features that help people navigate public services more easily, taking on the hardest problems in the domain and modeling the standard other engineers build toward.


• Drive solutions to ambiguous or undefined technical problems, weighing tradeoffs across competing priorities at discipline-wide scale.


• Own architecture and data-modeling decisions for systems spanning multiple services or teams, balancing speed against maintainability and pragmatism against ideal outcomes.


• Iterate to validate approaches, then engineer durable, reusable capabilities such as shared services, libraries, and AI-enabled components that other teams can build on.


• Produce documentation, technical decision records, and learning materials that engineers across multiple teams rely on.


• Mentor staff and senior engineers on technical judgment and practice, and create conditions for them to grow into unfamiliar problem spaces.

Requirements

• Extensive experience as a senior or staff software engineer working on production systems at scale, with a track record of solving ambiguous, high-leverage problems.


• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction across teams, including architecture and data-modeling decisions for multi-service systems.


• Strong written communication skills, with experience producing documentation and technical decision records for cross-team use.


• Experience mentoring engineers and elevating the technical judgment of those around you.


• Comfort weighing competing concerns such as delivery speed, maintainability, and feasibility.

Benefits and work setup

• Remote position; candidates must reside full-time in the United States.


• Full-time schedule of 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, with internal meetings scheduled between 10 AM and 3 PM PT.


• Open personal time off, a minimum of 14 paid holidays, and an org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day.


• Paid sick time up to 96 hours annually and 17 weeks of paid parental and family leave.


• Three weeks of paid sabbatical after five years of service.


• 401(k) with employer match (100% on the first 3% of contributions, with additional match for tenured staff) and medical coverage with at least one no-cost option.


• $500 annual professional development stipend, with up to $500 rollover each year to a $1,000 maximum.


• Phone or internet reimbursement of $50 per month.