Principal Software Engineer, Platform

present of AI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

PermitFlow is seeking a principal platform engineer to shape the platform those AI agents run on and to ensure robust, scalable infrastructure that connects filings, project data and approvals. You will stay hands-on in product code while guiding tech direction.

This role offers exposure to orchestration, data pipelines and observability in production, with responsibilities across reliability, tradeoffs, and cross‑team collaboration to ship practical, resilient AI-powered services.

Qualifications

• Strong backend and infrastructure experience.
• Experience with data pipelines and observability.
• Ability to design scalable platform and work across the stack.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for shared infrastructure and services.
• Hands-on contribution to product code and platform components.
• Own services that agents call, monitor failures, and tighten feedback loops.

Skills

Backend infrastructure

System design at scale

Observability & reliability

Hands-on AI systems

Job description

A principal platform engineer is expected to set technical direction for shared infrastructure and services while staying hands on in product code. A strong candidate brings deep backend and infrastructure experience, sound judgment about tradeoffs, and the ability to work across the stack when that is the fastest path. At a company building AI agents for construction permitting, that means shaping the platform those agents run on and the services that connect filings, project data and approvals.

How it fits the AI era

Platform work increasingly includes the plumbing that AI agents depend on: reliable job execution, data pipelines, integrations with outside systems and clear observability. AI can speed up coding and routine operations, but architecture choices, reliability under real world messiness and judgment about what to build stay human. The role sits where that mix is decided.

How it builds AI experience

The role offers hands on exposure to running agent based systems in production, including orchestration, evaluation and failure handling. That experience is built by owning the services agents call, watching how they fail on real permitting data and tightening the loop. Working close to document extraction and form filing with local authorities adds practical grounding in applied AI.

Worth showing

• Backend and infrastructure depth
• System design at scale
• Reliability and observability
• Hands on with AI systems

This is our own read, written from the employer's posting and the company's Spotlight. The employer's posting is the source of truth for the role.

About PermitFlow

AI agents that handle construction permitting end to end for builders, from pulling project data to filing forms with local authorities and tracking approvals.