Remote Principal Engineer: Scale Architecture & Tech Vision

Ladders; United States; Remote; USD 264,000 - 396,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off

Comprehensive health benefits (medical

Parental leave & fertility support

Telehealth and financial planning

Job summary

Ladders is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead a large-scale software environment in a remote US-based role. The position shapes technical direction and drives a multi-year architecture strategy across the domain, partnering with engineering leadership to improve design quality and delivery.

You will drive production-ready system design and influence reusable patterns that scale across teams. Responsibilities include mentoring Staff and Senior engineers, aligning with roadmaps and resource

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in large-scale enterprise web or SaaS applications.
• 7+ years in senior IC roles.
• Proven track record designing and shipping large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in at least one primary technology stack such as C#/.NET, Java, or C++.
• Strong command of distributed systems fundamentals: event-driven, asynchronous, concurrency, fault tolerance, performance.
• Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, or GCP).
• Solid grounding in data architecture: relational, NoSQL, vector databases, distributed persistence.
• Familiarity with AI/ML systems and LLM-based architectures.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision for your domain and guide execution over an 18+ month horizon.
• Produce complete, production-ready system designs and lead implementation efforts.
• Set engineering standards through code reviews and architecture assessments.
• Identify opportunities for shared systems and reusable patterns across teams.
• Coach and mentor Staff and Senior engineers in design and architecture.
• Partner with engineering leadership on roadmap and resource planning.
• Assess candidates for senior technical roles and uphold engineering bar.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Technical leadership

Staff/Senior mentoring

Code reviews

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Azure

AWS

GCP

Job description

Ladders is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead a large-scale software environment in a remote US-based role. The position shapes technical direction and drives a multi-year architecture strategy across the domain, partnering with engineering leadership to improve design quality and delivery.

You will drive production-ready system design and influence reusable patterns that scale across teams. Responsibilities include mentoring Staff and Senior engineers, aligning with roadmaps and resource