Principal Software Engineer

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Oakland / $280000 - $350000 annum

INFO

Salary

SALARY:

$280000 - $350000

Location

LOCATION

Oakland

Job Type
JOB TYPE

Permanent

Staff / Principal Software Engineer

AI, Platform Engineering & Growth Systems

Hybrid | Oakland, CA (3 days/week) - Relocation is not offered

Compensation: $280,000 - $400,000 Base + Bonus + Equity

A profitable, rapidly growing technology company operating one of the largest professional knowledge-sharing platforms in the healthcare industry is seeking a Staff or Principal Engineer to join as a key early technical partner to an incoming CTO.

This is a rare opportunity to work directly with executive leadership and help define the next generation of AI-powered products used by hundreds of thousands of professionals nationwide. If you thrive in environments where you can move from idea to production quickly, influence technical strategy, and build systems that create measurable business impact, we'd love to talk.

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

  • Direct partnership with a newly hired CTO
  • Founding-level engineering impact without startup risk
  • Profitable business with strong revenue growth
  • Highly visible role influencing product and technical direction
  • Extensive ownership across architecture, product validation, and execution
  • Opportunity to build AI-powered systems from the ground up
  • Competitive compensation package with meaningful equity participation

What You'll Be Doing

This role is ideal for a hands-on builder who enjoys solving ambiguous problems and creating scalable solutions from scratch.

You will:

  • Design and build agentic AI workflows and intelligent automation systems
  • Develop AI-powered products leveraging large-scale proprietary datasets
  • Architect and implement workflow orchestration solutions
  • Build personalization, engagement, and growth platforms
  • Develop commercial intelligence systems that generate actionable insights from user behavior and platform activity
  • Own projects from concept and prototyping through production deployment
  • Partner closely with product, business stakeholders, and engineering leadership
  • Collaborate with a distributed engineering organization across the U.S. and Europe
  • Drive technical decision-making while remaining deeply hands-on with coding

Ideal Background

We're looking for exceptional engineers who combine strong technical depth with a builder mentality.

Required Experience

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience
  • Strong backend development experience with Python
  • Experience building applications using Django
  • Modern frontend development experience with React
  • Deep understanding of AWS cloud infrastructure
  • Experience with PostgreSQL and data-intensive applications
  • Hands-on experience integrating with modern AI platforms such as OpenAI
  • Experience designing and delivering production-scale software systems
  • Ability to navigate ambiguity and independently drive initiatives

Nice to Have

  • Experience building AI agents or workflow orchestration systems
  • Experience with knowledge management, search, retrieval, or recommendation platforms
  • Healthcare, life sciences, or medical data experience
  • Growth engineering, marketing technology, or personalization platform experience
  • Track record of building products in lean, high-performing environments

What Success Looks Like

The right candidate is:

  • A builder first
  • Exceptionally hands-on
  • Comfortable wearing multiple hats
  • Strong in system design and architecture
  • Equally comfortable discussing strategy and writing code
  • Curious, entrepreneurial, and highly autonomous
  • Able to communicate complex technical concepts clearly

Team & Culture

  • Lean, high-caliber engineering organization
  • Global team with collaboration across U.S. and European offices
  • Hybrid work environment (Oakland office 3 days/week)
  • Strong emphasis on ownership, accountability, and execution
  • Fast-moving culture with limited bureaucracy

Compensation & Benefits

  • Base Salary: $280,000 - $350,000+ bonus
  • Equity opportunity
  • Comprehensive benefits package

Interested?

If you're a Staff or Principal Engineer looking for a rare opportunity to help shape the future of AI-enabled products while partnering directly with an executive technology leader, we'd love to connect.

Apply today for a confidential discussion.

CONTACT

Stephanie Landa

Principal Recruitment Consultant

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