Principal Software Engineer

The Role

We are hiring a Principal Engineer to take full, hands‑on ownership of Blitzy’s most critical production‑grade systems and to deliver high‑leverage features that materially improve customer outcomes and engineering velocity.

This is the most senior individual contributor role at the company today.

This is not a Senior‑plus role, an architecture‑only role, or a promotion‑track role. We are looking for someone who has already operated at Principal / Staff+ scope in a highly technical environment and expects to spend their time writing, reviewing, and shipping production code.

This role is 100% hands‑on. Leverage comes from system ownership, execution quality, and durable technical decisions — not people management or process.

What Success Looks Like

• You independently own mission‑critical production systems end‑to‑end

• You ship high‑leverage features that materially improve reliability, performance, and customer value

• You raise the technical bar through working code and outcomes, not reviews alone

• You identify and resolve the hardest technical bottlenecks limiting quality or velocity

• You make technical decisions with long‑term impact and stand behind them in production

• You are a self‑directed learner requiring minimal supervision

• You are dedicated to getting things done right without making technical compromises

• You demonstrate strong technical expertise across the full stack: frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems

• You materially increase the effectiveness of the engineering organization through example and judgment

Areas of Ownership

• End‑to‑end ownership of production‑grade backend systems used by enterprise customers

• Correctness, scalability, performance, and operational reliability in real environments

• Delivery and stewardship of high‑impact features, not just incremental improvements

• Building and improving Blitzy using Blitzy, holding the platform to real‑world standards

• Designing, operating, and evolving LLM validation loops to ensure correctness, consistency, and durability in production

• Setting engineering quality and durability expectations across teams without direct reports

Core Technologies & Required Experience

Backend

• Python (primary language)

• Backend frameworks and microservices architectures

• RPC‑based services (REST, gRPC)

• Node.js and JavaScript (supporting languages)

Cloud & Infrastructure

• Expertise across at least two of AWS, GCP, and Azure, with GCP mandatory

• Expert‑level Kubernetes experience for container orchestration in production environments

• Terraform for infrastructure as code

• Production systems: monitoring, reliability, scalability, and operational tooling

Databases & Data Systems

• Strong expertise across both SQL and NoSQL databases

• SQL: PostgreSQL, MySQL, or similar relational databases

• NoSQL: MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB, or similar

1. Graph databases (Neo4j) for modeling and searching complex relationships

2. Vector databases / embeddings infrastructure for semantic search and retrieval

AI / LLM Tooling

• Experience building and operating LLM‑powered systems in production

• Designing and implementing LLM validation loops (evaluation, feedback, regression testing, and failure analysis)

• LangSmith (or equivalent tooling) for tracing, evaluation, and debugging

• Familiarity with specific models or vendors (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) is a plus

Frontend & Full‑Stack Competency

• Strong understanding of frontend frameworks and architecture

• Ability to evaluate and contribute to frontend technical decisions

• Demonstrated technical expertise across the full stack — you can debug, design, and ship across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI layers

Enterprise Systems

• Core understanding of how large‑scale enterprise systems are designed, integrated, deployed, and operated

• Experience working within — or modernizing — complex, long‑lived production environments

Ways to Stand Out

• Prior experience operating at Principal Engineer / Staff+ scope at a highly technical company

• Deep understanding of how ent