Principal Software Engineer, Core Sharing & Collaboration

Dropbox; United States; Hybrid; USD 227,800 - 385,200; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Eligibility for corporate bonus program

Stock options in the form of RSUs

Job summary

Dropbox is looking for a Principal Engineer to oversee critical technical problems and drive long-term strategy. The successful candidate will influence architecture and standards across teams, deeply engage in software development, and lead AI initiatives to improve customer value.

With a strong emphasis on technical excellence and strategic leadership, this role is vital for shaping Dropbox's future as a technological innovator.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience designing and evolving large scale software systems.
• Demonstrated success at Principal level influencing technical direction.
• Strong experience with consumer facing products and user experience.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive technical outcomes across multiple teams.
• Define long term technical strategy and influence senior leaders.
• Architect and evolve foundational systems for new product capabilities.

Skills

Technical judgment

Adaptability

Judgment

Connection

Education

Advanced degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

As a Principal Engineer at Dropbox, you will own company critical, loosely defined technical problems with multi‑year impact, operating at the intersection of technology, product, business strategy, and applied AI. You will define long‑term technical direction for customer facing experiences used by millions, identifying where AI meaningfully improves customer value and translating evolving business context and industry advances into durable, multi‑area strategies and roadmaps that shape how Dropbox builds, scales, and innovates, while remaining hands‑on in software development where it provides the greatest leverage.

Your influence will span organizations, setting foundational architecture, driving execution standards, and aligning senior technical and product leaders across boundaries. You will lead the responsible introduction and adoption of AI across product capabilities and engineering workflows, bring clarity to the most complex decisions, institutionalize engineering excellence, and contribute directly through critical design, prototyping, and code reviews.

In return, you will operate as a trusted technical partner to senior leadership, shape systems and platforms including AI powered foundations that define Dropbox’s future, and act as a company level technical strategist, advancing Dropbox’s mission to create a more enlightened way of working.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive technical outcomes across multiple teams and organizations, delivering company critical customer and business impact at scale.
• Define long term technical strategy and partner with senior Product and Engineering leaders as the technical owner for the most important company objectives.
• Tackle the most ambiguous and far reaching technical and product problems, shaping what the company builds as much as how it builds it.
• Remain deeply hands‑on in software development, owning and implementing the most critical, complex, and foundational parts of the system where leverage is highest.
• Influence and align roadmaps across organizations, resolving structural bottlenecks and changing how Dropbox builds and operates.
• Architect and evolve foundational systems (frontend or backend) and platforms that enable new product capabilities and operate reliably at the scale of hundreds of millions of users.
• Model exceptional technical judgment and execution rigor, setting and sustaining high engineering standards across a distributed, virtual environment.
• Drive AI adoption both to increase productivity and to produce AI based features.

Requirements

• Advanced degree in Computer Science or a related technical field involving substantial software development, or equivalent industry experience demonstrating deep technical mastery.
• 15+ years of experience designing, building, and evolving large scale software systems with sustained impact across multiple teams or organizations.
• Demonstrated success operating at a Principal level, owning company critical technical problems and influencing long term technical direction.
• Strong experience building consumer facing products at scale, with a deep understanding of user experience, performance, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Broad and deep technical expertise across multiple domains, including several of frontend, mobile, search, databases, storage systems, concurrency, and distributed systems.
• Practical experience applying modern ML, LLM based APIs, and agentic frameworks in production systems, with sound judgment around quality, cost, and risk.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and persuasively to senior engineering, product, and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience defining and scaling company wide platforms or architectural standards that are adopted across multiple organizations.
• Proven track record of leading the introduction of new technologies such as AI or ML into core products or engineering workflows with durable impact.
• Experience operating in highly distributed, virtual first engineering organizations at global scale.

Key Skills

• Awareness: Understand yourself and others.
• Judgment: Evaluate information and make decisions in complex situations.
• Adaptability: Learn, adjust, and stay effective through change.
• Connection: Communicate, collaborate, and build trust.

Compensation

US Zone 1: $284,800—$385,200 USD

US Zone 2: $256,300—$346,700 USD

US Zone 3: $227,800—$308,200 USD

The range(s) listed above is the expected annual salary/OTE (On‑Target Earnings) for this role, subject to change. Please note, OTE are for sales roles only.

Salary/OTE is just one component of Dropbox’s total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Dropbox takes a number of factors into account when determining individual starting pay, including job and level they are hired into, location/metropolitan area, skillset, and peer compensation. We target most new hire offers between the minimum up to the middle of the range.

Dropbox uses the zip code of an employee’s remote work location to determine which metropolitan pay range we use. Current US Zone locations are as follows:

• US Zone 1: San Francisco metro, New York City metro, or Seattle metro
• US Zone 2: California (outside SF metro), Colorado, Connecticut (outside NYC metro), Delaware, Illinois (Chicago metro), Indiana (Chicago metro), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Chicago metro), New Hampshire, New Jersey (outside NYC metro), New York (outside NYC metro), Oregon, Pennsylvania (D.C. metro), Pennsylvania (outside NYC metro), Texas (Austin metro), Virginia (DC metro), Washington (outside Seattle metro), Washington DC metro, West Virginia (DC metro), Wisconsin (Chicago metro)
• US Zone 3: All other US locations

Equal Opportunity Statement

Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We are a welcoming place for everyone, and we do our best to make sure all people feel supported and connected at work.