Principal Software Engineer - Backend

Autodesk; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 139,000 - 249,000; Full time

Job summary

Autodesk's Enterprise Data Management (EDM) organization seeks a Principal Software Engineer - Backend to drive architecture for large-scale backend and distributed systems. You will anchor high-autonomy technical decisions, shape service design, and ensure reliable, evolvable data services across teams.

As a senior IC, you will mentor engineers, set standards, and partner with product and platform leaders to translate ambiguous problems into concrete technical solutions while maintaining a

Qualifications

• 10+ years in backend and distributed systems engineering.
• Experience building enterprise platform services used by many teams.
• Strong AWS, Python, API design, and backend integration skills.
• Proven ownership of mission-critical systems and long-term maintainability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Provide principal-level technical leadership across multiple backend teams.
• Design and evolve scalable backend systems and APIs for enterprise use.
• Lead distributed, event-driven system design with strong fault tolerance.
• Establish API standards, versioning, and consumer experience guidelines.
• Drive operational excellence: observability, incident response, and post-incident learning.
• Mentor engineers and influence architecture across domains.
• Partner with product, data, and platform leaders to translate problems into actionable solutions.
• Remain hands-on in high-impact design and implementation work.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Python

AWS

API design

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kafka

Kinesis

CI/CD

Job description

Position Overview

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer - Backend to join Autodesk's Enterprise Data Management (EDM) organization within the COO-GET Engineering group. This is a senior individual contributor role operating at the Principal (P4) level, expected to drive technology direction for large, complex, and business-critical backend and distributed systems.

This role is anchored in backend software engineering excellence: designing, building, and evolving scalable services, APIs, and event-driven systems that operate at enterprise scale. As a Principal Engineer, you will work with high autonomy and ambiguity, shape long-term architecture, and influence multiple teams and domains. Familiarity with data engineering concepts is valuable, but backend systems, service design, and distributed systems are the core competencies.

You will function as a technical authority and force multiplier - guiding design decisions, setting standards, and ensuring Autodesk's core data services are reliable, resilient, and evolvable over time.

• Provide principal-level technical leadership across multiple backend and platform teams, shaping architecture and technical strategy beyond a single squad or service
• Author and evolve critical backend systems and APIs, ensuring they meet long-term scalability, reliability, and extensibility goals
• Lead design of distributed, event-driven systems, addressing consistency, ordering, failure handling, replay, idempotency, rate limiting, and backpressure
• Establish and drive service and API standards across domains, including schema design, versioning strategies, backward compatibility, and consumer experience
• Act as a technical decision-maker for cross-team initiatives; evaluate tradeoffs and make durable architectural choices aligned with business priorities
• Drive operational excellence across systems you influence: observability, alerting strategy, incident response, post-incident learning, and systemic remediation
• Introduce and reinforce engineering best practices for design reviews, code quality, testing, CI/CD, and production readiness across multiple teams
• Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders; raise the bar through influence, example, and coaching rather than direct management
• Partner deeply with product, data, and platform leaders to translate ambiguous business problems into clear, actionable technical solutions
• Remain hands-on where impact is highest: complex system design, critical implementations, architectural refactors, and high-severity incident resolution

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant depth in backend and distributed systems
• Experience building enterprise platform services consumed by many internal and/or external teams.
• Python + AWS + API + backend services integration experience
• Demonstrated expertise building and operating backend services and APIs in production environments at scale
• Strong experience with distributed systems design, including asynchronous processing, messaging, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance
• Deep hands-on experience with AWS and cloud-native architectures (compute, storage, messaging, IAM, observability, scaling patterns)
• Proven ownership of mission-critical systems, including design accountability, operational responsibility, and long-term maintainability
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, service-level data modeling, API design, automated testing, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code
• Track record of influencing architecture and engineering outcomes across multiple teams without formal authority
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with data engineering or data platform ecosystems (e.g., streaming pipelines, data warehouses such as Snowflake) as a producer or advanced consumer of data services
• Experience with event streaming and messaging platforms (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalents)
• Background in domains such as master data management, identity resolution, data enrichment, or data quality
• Experience integrating backend services with analytics, search/indexing, or ML/AI platforms
• Prior experience operating in large, complex organizations where systems span multiple teams, regions, and business units

Job Requisition ID #

26WD97363

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software - from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk - it is at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you're an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk's competitive compensation package. For U.S.-based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $139,000 and $249,260. Offers are based on the candidate's experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Belonging

We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/global-belonging

In-Person Onboarding and Identity Verification

This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.