Principal Software Engineer- CD

Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code – testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this “outer loop,” helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle.

Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform. 

Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend — enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency. 

With a global team across 26 offices and 27 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.

Position Summary

This is an exceptional opportunity to lead a high-impact component at a rapidly growing startup. In this role, you will focus on the Continuous Delivery & GitOps  which serves as the foundation for various Harness products. You will be responsible for architecting, scaling, and securing the cloud platform that fuels Harness's CD and other essential products.

Principal Engineers at Harness

Poses a careful blend of domain specific engineering expertise and world class technical leadership. There are a number of competencies that a Principal Engineer must display. 

Technical Competencies

In depth tactical knowledge of the domain, yet broad experience and skill sets 

Domain and product expert when representing harness with customers and internal teams alike. 

Seamlessly include, promote and balance cross functional inputs from Product, Design, Enablement

Break down complex technical requirements to motivate and lead cross-functional teams 

Consider the execution needed today, into the future, make investments aligned with broader impact 

Leadership Competencies

Demonstrable experience in executing on one, or multiple roadmap through working with others, finding the ROI in organized efforts

Subject matter and domain expertise applied to develop others internal and external to Harness

In depth understanding of product features and roadmaps, how customers engage with the product in your space 

Clear displays of improving execution via process optimization, or other means 

Natural advisor to leadership on resourcing constraints, efficiencies.  

Practice and evangelize Harness core values

Participate and contribute to Architecture Committees, Hiring Committees, and others that are formed to solve issues across the org, and company 

Key Responsibilities

Coordinates and proposes collaborative efforts across multiple teams in engineering, guiding team members to make well-informed decisions that align with the strategic plans of the respective sub-department.

Proactively seeks to prevent redundant efforts, taking existing assets and hardening them for broad re-usability

Apply your expertise in a mentorship capacity, to others in the organization. Champion a culture of improvement. 

Participate in resource planning, project mapping, and success criteria for large engineering initiatives

Responds swiftly to the needs of today. Plan diligently for the needs of tomorrow

Solve the most difficult technical problems at Harness. 

Interfaces with senior engineering leadership on project deliverables and planning. Create visibility and presents to executives when needed 

Lead and inspire innovation at the highest order across Harness’ portfolio of products and services

Propose POCs and optimizations regularly

Align the goals of module sub-teams with the overall goals of Harness Engineering

Gather escalations from your project team, remove blockers, enable your project team, broker solutions with cross functional engineering leadership

Represent your project to external customers, partners or other stakeholders.

You are the Harness SME for most, if not all domains in your area of expertise

About You

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science 

12+ years of work experience 

Should have worked on Java, Golang, GRPC based microservices architecture with a modern tech stack and development environment 

Must have good knowledge/experience on Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka/Kafka Streams 

Must have worked extensively on low level API design and have a good understanding of basic design principles 

Strong experience in building, designing and scaling high performance solutions and products 

Strong communication skills, both verbal and written, and the ability to listen effectively 

Must have experience in mentoring and managing team 

Nice to have 

Good to have experience in devops products development background. 

Harness in the news:

Accelerating Our Mission to Bring AI to Everything After Code

Goldman Sachs leads investment in software delivery startup Harness at $5.5 billion valuation

How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal

Harness Research Shows AI Visibility Crisis Fueling Security Nightmare

Harness has been named to the Inc. Power Partner list for software delivery success

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

At Harness, we care about your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. For additional information on this topic, you can visit our privacy Portal: https://harness-privacy.relyance.ai/

Note on Fraudulent Recruiting/Offers

We have become aware that there may be fraudulent recruiting attempts being made by people posing as representatives of Harness. These scams may involve fake job postings, unsolicited emails, or messages claiming to be from our recruiters or hiring managers. 

Please note, we do not ask for sensitive or financial information via chat, text, or social media, and any email communications will come from the domain @harness.io. Additionally, Harness will never ask for any payment, fee to be paid, or purchases to be made by a job applicant. All applicants are encouraged to apply directly to our open jobs via our website. Interviews are generally conducted via Zoom video conference unless the candidate requests other accommodations.

If you believe that you have been the target of an interview/offer scam by someone posing as a representative of Harness, please do not provide any personal or financial information and contact us immediately at  security@harness.io . You can also find additional information about this type of scam and report any fraudulent employment offers via the Federal Trade Commission’s website ( https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams) , or you can contact your local law enforcement agency.