Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer (Backend / Distributed Systems)Long Island City, NY | Onsite 4 days/week | Visa sponsorship availableAbout the companyVenture-backed AI startup in Long Island City building a platform that trains enterprise AI agents on how a business actually works. The product learns from a company’s existing dashboards, code, memos and agent traces so agents can handle complex business tasks accurately, with full lineage back to the source data. Customers include hedge funds, consumer brands and digital asset platforms. The team publishes original research on fine tuning and enterprise reasoning.The roleThis is a hands-on Principal IC role focused on backend and platform architecture. The engineering team is small and very strong, mostly early-career engineers out of MIT and CMU. You’ll be the person setting architectural direction and helping that team level up while still writing a lot of code yourself. It’s not a people management role. There’s room to grow into broader technical leadership as the company scales, if that interests you.What you’ll doOwn major architectural decisions across the backend and platformDesign, build and scale distributed production systemsMentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the teamWork wherever the product needs you, since backend is the focus but this is an early-stage companyWhat we’re looking for5+ years of software engineering experience, 7+ preferredStrong backend and distributed systems backgroundProven ability to design and scale production systemsSolid CS fundamentals and programming abilityComfortable operating with ownership and limited structureStartup or product engineering experience preferred. Big Tech backgrounds with strong ownership also work well.TeamAbout 9 people today, including software and research engineers.CompensationBase salary up to $300,000, plus equity.LocationLong Island City, NYC. Onsite 4 days a week. Relocation candidates welcome. Visa sponsorship and transfers supported.