Principal Engineer

Role Overview

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as a premier technical authority and visionary within Phenoms AI-driven talent experience platform.

In this role, you will bridge the gap between high-level product strategy and deep technical execution. You will own the technical roadmap, architectural integrity, and scalability of core platform capabilities used by global enterprise customers. As a hands-on technical leader, you will solve highly complex, ambiguous problems while mentoring senior engineering talent and driving engineering excellence across cross-functional teams.

What You'll Do

Architect Scalable Systems & AI Infrastructures

• Own the long-term technical roadmap, architecture, and design specifications for complex enterprise SaaS products, subsystems, and product families.
• Design and build highly secure, fault-tolerant, and large-scale distributed systems that power our platform infrastructure.
• Lead architecture discussions, guide microservices-based cloud-native designs, and establish patterns for complex data processing.

Lead Engineering & Technical Execution

• Drive end-to-end technical execution of high-impact engineering initiatives, transforming vague product requirements into scalable technical realities.
• Drive rigorous engineering best practices in code quality, comprehensive system testing, deep observability, and long-term system reliability.
• Tackle and resolve the platform's most complex, ambiguous technical problems, performing root-cause investigations on critical architectural bottlenecks.

Influence Platform Innovation & Strategy

• Contribute directly to platform-wide architecture, core technical frameworks, and company-wide engineering strategy.
• Identify opportunities to abstract complexities into reusable services, creating technical leverage across multiple engineering product lines.
• Keep Phenom at the forefront of technology by investigating novel engineering methodologies, prototyping AI capabilities, and evaluating data frameworks.

Technical Mentorship & Collaboration

• Actively coach, mentor, and elevate senior and staff engineers, fostering a culture of continuous technical growth and psychological safety.
• Partner closely with Product Management, Technical Program Management, and cross-functional engineering leaders to deliver impactful capabilities.
• Act as a technical liaison, translating complex systems constraints into clear, actionable updates for non-technical stakeholders and executive leadership.

What We're Looking For

• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience within product development organizations.
• 4+ years operating in a Principal, Architect, or high-level Staff Engineer capacity with visible impact across multiple teams or platforms.
• Master-level proficiency in designing, building, and benchmarking large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong backend development experience in Java or similar enterprise-grade languages.
• Proven experience building and scaling cloud-native, microservices-based architectures on AWS or Azure.
• Deep expertise working with distributed data systems and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB or similar.
• Exceptional system design skills with a data-driven mindset toward performance, security, and scalability targets.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a proven track record of influencing technical direction without direct authority.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams in fast-paced, high-growth AI or enterprise SaaS environments.

Education

• A bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical field is required.