Job Description
Description
Principal Engineer
- dLocation: Redwood City, California (The Bay Area) - ideal for someone in Menlo Park, Redwood City, or San Francisco Bay Area. Home office with some travel to the office.Reports To: Head of Product and Engineering
- *Compensation: role comes with strong and competitive base salary, annual bonus and ESOP program (equity/shares) in a late stage Pre-IPO business! Total package is higher than the publicly posted target salary range**
About the company:
SaaS that helps connect physical locations, digital systems, and intelligent automation into one unified ecosystem. We build scalable, cloud-native systems that
integrate hardware, IoT, AI-driven applications, and enterprise SaaS to transform our clients business processes.
We are looking for a hands-on Principal Engineer who thrives at the intersection of system
architecture, hardware-software integration, and scalable SaaS platforms.
Role Overview
As a Principal Engineer, you will be a technical leader responsible for architecting, designing,
and scaling mission-critical systems across cloud, edge, and in-store environments. You will
work across hardware interfaces, distributed systems, AI-enabled applications, and multi-tenant
SaaS platforms.
This role requires deep technical expertise, strong ownership mindset, and the ability to operate
in a fast-paced startup environment.
Key Responsibilities
- System Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Drive end-to-end system-level architecture across cloud, edge, and in-store components.
- Define scalable, resilient, and secure architectures for multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
- Lead design reviews, technical strategy discussions, and long-term roadmap planning.
- Mentor senior engineers and influence engineering best practices.
- Hardware-Software Integration
- Design and develop robust hardware-to-software interfaces.
- Integrate RFID, IoT, and edge devices with cloud platforms.
- Ensure real-time data ingestion, processing, and reliability at scale.
- Optimize performance across distributed systems and physical environments.
- Cloud & SaaS Engineering
- Architect and build cloud-native applications on GCP (Google Cloud)
- Design and implement multi-tenancy models.
- Develop microservices-based architectures using:
- Kubernetes
- Docker / Containers
- Message Queues (Kafka)
- Redis
- BigQuery
- MongoDB
- Ensure high availability, observability, and scalability.
Application Development
- Develop backend systems using:
- Java (Spring Boot)
- Python (FastAPI or similar frameworks)
- Node/NPM-based frameworks
- Contribute to API design, distributed system patterns, and event-driven architectures.
- AI & Data Integration
- Work with AI/ML teams to integrate modeling outputs into production applications.
- Implement data pipelines and support analytics use cases.
- Apply AI-driven insights into real-world retail workflows.
- Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field OR equivalent demonstrated real-world engineering experience.
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering with deep system-level exposure.
- Proven expertise in:
- Cloud-native SaaS systems (GCP preferred)
- Multi-tenant architectures
- Kubernetes & container orchestration
- Microservices architecture
- Kafka, Redis, MongoDB, BigQuery
- Java (Spring Boot), Python frameworks, and Node/NPM ecosystem
- Experience designing scalable distributed systems.
- Strong understanding of hardware-software interaction patterns.
- Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with RFID systems and IoT integration.
- Background in retail technology or operational systems.
- Exposure to AI/ML modeling and productionizing models.
- Experience building edge-to-cloud architectures.
- Leadership & Cultural FitWe are looking for someone who:
- Is a hands-on technical leader, not just a reviewer.
- Understands that "we are in the same boat" - collaborates deeply across teams.
- Is a self-starter who takes ownership without waiting for direction.
- Thrives in a fast-paced startup environment.
- Balances architectural thinking with pragmatic execution.
- What Success Looks Like
- Scalable architecture that supports rapid customer growth.
- Reliable integration between store hardware and cloud systems.
- Clean, maintainable, high-performance codebases.
- Strong engineering culture with technical excellence as the bar.
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