Software Engineer (Principal), Eng-wide Architecture

Job Title: Software Engineer (Principal), Eng-wide Architecture

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Remote

The Role

We’re looking for an exceptional, hands-on Principal Software Engineer to serve as the most senior individual contributor in our engineering organization. You’ll develop a deep understanding of our entire technology ecosystem, shape the long-term technical architecture, and establish the engineering practices that enable teams to build reliable, scalable systems at speed.

You'll dedicate approximately half your time to advancing agentic engineering, transforming how we develop, review, test, and ship software through AI-powered automation. The remaining time will focus on solving the most critical engineering challenges across the organization, wherever your expertise can create the greatest impact.

What You’ll Be Doing

1. Own Technical Architecture: Develop a comprehensive understanding of our platforms, infrastructure, and engineering ecosystem to shape long-term architectural direction and guide critical technical decisions.
2. Lead Agentic Engineering: Design and implement AI-driven engineering workflows, autonomous coding agents, and intelligent automation across the software development lifecycle.
3. Transform Code Review & Delivery: Drive an initial goal of making 30% of pull requests eligible for automated approval within the first 3 months, through reliable AI-powered reviews, automated validation, and clearly defined quality gates.
4. Solve Critical Engineering Challenges: Take ownership of the organization's highest-priority technical problems, from complex architectural bottlenecks and reliability issues to platform scalability and urgent cross-team initiatives.
5. Establish Engineering Excellence: Define and champion engineering standards across system design, code quality, testing, observability, reliability, security, and maintainability.
6. Build Developer Infrastructure: Improve CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, automated testing, and internal engineering workflows to increase velocity and reduce manual overhead.
7. Drive Cross-Platform Alignment: Identify architectural inconsistencies, reduce technical debt, and introduce reusable patterns and shared infrastructure across engineering teams.
8. Stay Deeply Hands-On: Write production-grade code, build prototypes, review complex implementations, debug critical issues, and lead by example through direct technical contributions.
9. Provide Organization-Wide Technical Leadership: Mentor senior and staff engineers, influence technical strategy, and raise the engineering bar without relying on formal management authority.

What We’re Looking For

1. 12+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record of operating at Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical leadership levels.
2. Exceptional hands-on engineering expertise in Python, TypeScript, or similar languages, with extensive experience building and operating complex production systems.
3. Deep systems architecture experience across distributed systems, microservices, APIs, cloud infrastructure, databases, and large-scale platform engineering.
4. Practical experience with agentic engineering, including AI coding agents, LLM integrations, tool calling, orchestration, automated code review, and autonomous development workflows.
5. Strong understanding of software quality and delivery, including automated testing, CI/CD, code review systems, observability, security, and production reliability.
6. Proven ability to drive technical strategy across multiple teams, establish engineering standards, and influence architectural decisions at an organizational level.
7. Experience improving developer productivity through engineering automation, internal tooling, infrastructure improvements, and measurable process optimization.
8. Exceptional problem-solving and execution skills, with the ability to rapidly understand unfamiliar systems, navigate ambiguity, and resolve high-impact technical challenges.
9. Strong technical communication and mentorship skills, with the ability to align engineering teams, challenge assumptions, and drive adoption of better engineering practices.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience in AI research labs, AI-native companies, or high-growth technology startups.
2. Hands-on experience with AI coding agents and autonomous development systems, including tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar technologies.
3. Experience designing agentic software development pipelines, including automated PR generation, code review, testing, validation, and deployment workflows.
4. Familiarity with agent orchestration frameworks, MCP, tool-use architectures, context engineering, and evaluation frameworks.
5. Experience leading organization-wide architectural transformations, platform modernization, or developer productivity initiatives.
6. Background in AI/ML infrastructure, data-intensive systems, or human data platforms supporting model training and evaluation.
7. Experience defining and measuring engineering effectiveness metrics, including deployment frequency, change failure rate, review cycle time, and automation coverage.

Compensation & Benefits Notice

The national pay range for this full-time position is base salary of $260,000 –$320,000. All employees are eligible for equity compensation, and employees may also receive performance-based bonuses, dependent on role and subject to company policies. micro1 provides a comprehensive benefits package, including up to 100% reimbursement for health-insurance premiums, paid time off, a 401(K) plan with a company match, and additional benefits designed to support a high-performing, remote-first workforce.

micro1 is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation during the application process, reach out to support@micro1.ai.

Our hiring process utilizes artificial intelligence tools to assist in candidate screening and assessment. Our AI tools are designed to complement, not replace, human decision-making.