Remote Principal Engineer, Real-Time Web Platform

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Pantheon, a remote-forward engineering company, seeks a Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership and shape engineering strategy across a real-time collaborative platform. You will balance architecture, reliability, and developer experience while guiding multiple teams toward scalable, production-ready solutions.

You will lead initiatives across frontend, backend, APIs, and data models, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product and customers to deliver phased, impactful outcomes.

Qualifications

• 14+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Track record as Principal Engineer or equivalent technical leader across multiple teams.
• Experience defining technical strategy for complex products/platforms.
• Strong systems thinking across frontend, backend, APIs, data, infrastructure, security, and operations.
• Experience with real-time, collaborative, or stateful systems.
• Judgment in build-versus-buy, platform boundaries, and technical debt.
• Exposure to production reliability, observability, incident response, and ownership.
• Ability to write clear design documents and explain tradeoffs to diverse stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define technical direction across real-time collaboration, APIs, data models, and developer-facing extension points.
• Set architectural boundaries between platform, hosting, and external systems.
• Make build-versus-buy decisions with clear criteria for value, reliability, security, and cost.
• Identify risks early and document decisions for revisits when evidence changes.
• Create architecture enabling fast MVP delivery without long-term constraints.
• Drive cross-team engineering strategy and measurable outcomes.
• Mentor senior engineers through reviews, design sessions, and pair programming.
• Collaborate with product and customers to translate goals into phased delivery plans.

Skills

Principal Engineer leadership

Systems thinking

Distributed systems

Real-time collaboration

API design

Mentoring engineers

Ambiguity tolerance

AI-assisted engineering tools

Job description

Pantheon, a remote-forward engineering company, seeks a Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership and shape engineering strategy across a real-time collaborative platform. You will balance architecture, reliability, and developer experience while guiding multiple teams toward scalable, production-ready solutions.

You will lead initiatives across frontend, backend, APIs, and data models, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product and customers to deliver phased, impactful outcomes.