Principal Software Engineer - AI

Pulumi; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 228,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to shape the future of AI-assisted infrastructure. This hands-on role involves leading engineering efforts for Pulumi Copilot and Pulumi AI, focusing on integrating modern AI capabilities to enhance developer experience. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in software engineering and strong leadership skills.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance

Unlimited PTO policy

401(k) plan with employer match

20 weeks of paid parental leave

Annual learning and development budget

Monthly wellness fund

Quarterly happiness fund

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Demonstrated leadership experience in mentoring and guiding architecture.

Responsibilities

• Design, code, and lead development of AI-powered features.
• Collaborate across teams to integrate AI into their roadmaps.
• Lead architectural discussions and design/code reviews.

Skills

Python

Java

Go

C++

Collaboration

Communication

Job description

Principal Software Engineer – Pulumi AI

Who We Are

Pulumi is realizing the vision ofcloud engineering: building tools and services that enable every developer to program the cloud using the tools and practices they already know. We lead with an open source platform that embraces real programming languages, tools, and techniques, and offers an innovative SaaS product that helps teams collaborate. Cloud native leaders like Snowflake and CockroachDB as well as innovators like Mercedes-Benz R&D North America use Pulumi to make cloud infrastructure their competitive advantage.

Pulumi helps developers and infrastructure engineers tap into the vast world of cloud services–from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to Datadog, GitHub, Auth0, Rancher, and more–and create production-grade, repeatable infrastructure.

Pulumi is headquartered in Seattle, WA. This role can be in Seattle or remote.

About the Role and Team

We’re looking for aPrincipal Software Engineer who is passionate about developer tools and excited to shape the future of AI-assisted infrastructure as code. You’ll lead engineering efforts for Pulumi Copilot and Pulumi AI, integrating modern generative AI capabilities into the Pulumi Cloud to dramatically improve the developer experience.

This role is hands-on: we’re looking for a strong coder who can dive deep on implementation details, while also driving architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and helping set the AI strategy.

AI is evolving fast—we need someone who can keep pace with new developments and translate them into impactful product capabilities.

What You’ll Do

• Design, code, and lead development of AI-powered features across Pulumi Cloud and CLI.
• Build agentic workflows and intelligent assistants that help users write infrastructure as code, troubleshoot issues, and manage resources more effectively.
• Collaborate across teams to help them surface their features and data to Pulumi AI, and help bring AI into their roadmaps.
• Lead architectural discussions and design/code reviews with actionable feedback.
• Stay up to date on the latest in GenAI and apply it pragmatically to ship real value.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in infrastructure, distributed systems, or developer platforms.
• Proficient in one or more imperative languages (e.g., Python, Java, Go, C++, etc.)—you’re comfortable writing and reviewing production-quality code.
• Demonstrated leadership experience—mentoring, guiding architecture, driving initiatives forward.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.

Bonus if You Have

• 1+ years of experience in GenAI: working with LLMs, chat interfaces, agentic systems, RAG pipelines, or vector databases.
• Experience building developer-focused products or internal developer platforms.
• Contributions to open source projects, or public demos of AI/dev tooling work.
• A passion for shipping iteratively in a fast-paced, evolving space.

Compensation:

• Base Salary Hiring Range: $180,500 - $227,850
• All full-time employee offers at Pulumi include base salary, bonus or variable, equity and benefits (details below).

Benefits & Perks at Pulumi:

Health & Wellness:
We offer comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and supplemental insurance at no cost to U.S. employees. Internationally, we comply with local healthcare requirements and provide regionally appropriate coverage.

Time Off:
Our unlimited PTO policy encourages balance and rest — and we require employees to take at least three weeks off annually, plus 13 U.S. holidays.

401(k):
U.S. employees are eligible for a 401(k) plan with an employer match to support long-term financial wellness.

Parental Leave:
We provide 20 weeks of paid leave for birthing parents or primary caregivers, and 16 weeks for non-birthing parents or secondary caregivers.

Remote-First Culture:
Pulumi has been fully remote since 2020, with teammates across 20+ U.S. states and 12+ countries. We support flexible work with asynchronous collaboration and an annual “work from anywhere” stipend.

Professional Development:
Every employee receives an annual learning and development budget to support growth, learning, and career goals.

Equity Ownership:
We believe in acting like owners. All employees receive equity and are empowered to think big, move fast, and build the future of cloud together.

Additional Support:
We offer a monthly wellness fund to support mental and physical well-being, and a quarterly happiness fund for team connection or personal use.

About Pulumi:

Pulumi is reimagining how teams build cloud software, enabling developers and infrastructure experts to work better together through a unique combination of programming languages, tools, and systems innovation.

Our flagship infrastructure as code technology is open source and our SaaS product, Pulumi Cloud, provides platform teams, secrets management, and cloud management capabilities, and more. We have pioneered leveraging AI across all of these areas with our LLM-powered Pulumi Copilot to push the boundaries of what's possible. At Pulumi, we dream big, in the pursuit of helping our customers out-innovate and win.

Founded in 2017 by industry veterans with over five decades of combined experience building developer platforms, Pulumi now has a global community of more than 350,000 members and serves over 3,250 customers. Despite our rapid growth, we're still only getting started, and are early in our mission to democratize the cloud. If you thrive in a fast-paced, high-performance, we want to work with you to accelerate Pulumi's impact.

At Pulumi, we don't just accept difference, we celebrate, support, and thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our customers. Pulumi is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.