Principal Engineer

Epic Games • Bellevue, WA

2d • Remote

About The Position

Epic Games is seeking a Principal Engineer to be the technical backbone of EPE. This role combines technical leadership with hands-on programming, focusing on defining standards, architecture patterns, and programming practices. The Principal Engineer will be involved in the organization's most complex and visible projects, providing principal-level programming expertise to ensure successful delivery. This role will collaborate with team leads as a peer, influencing technical direction through a hands-on approach. Responsibilities may include defining new AI-assisted development processes, writing production code, and communicating complex technical decisions to executive leadership.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional software programming experience, with meaningful time spent as a senior individual contributor or technical lead
• Deep, hands-on expertise in Python and Golang for production systems
• Strong experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, including infrastructure-as-code (Terraform preferred)
• Real, practical experience building AI-powered systems: RAG architectures, prompt programming, context window management, LLM integrations, and agentic workflows
• Familiarity with AI development tools like Claude Code and similar coding assistants, not just as a user but understanding how to build effective workflows around them
• Solid DevOps background: CI/CD (Github Actions preferred), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), automated testing, and release management
• Strong experience designing and operating distributed systems, APIs, and service deployments in production
• Demonstrated ability to context-switch between strategic technical leadership and deep hands-on programming work
• Experience setting and maintaining programming standards across multiple teams without having direct authority over those teams
• Strong communication skills. You can explain a technical decision to a director and a junior programmer in the same afternoon and both walk away understanding it
• Comfort with ambiguity. EPE solves problems across the entire company, so the domain changes constantly. You need to be someone who thrives on that, not someone who needs a narrow lane

Responsibilities

• Own technical standards, best practices, and architectural guidance across multiple teams
• Step into the org's highest-priority projects when they need hands-on help to ship
• Partner with team leads to raise the quality bar on design, code, and delivery
• Drive EPE's programming direction, including how we build with tools like Claude Code, Cloud Infrastructure, and LLM primitives
• Direct AI development tools to build, test, and review code.
• Debug problems and unblock teams
• Drive operational maturity: CI/CD pipelines, testing practices, code quality, observability, and infrastructure-as-code, as well as evaluate new tools and patterns, then help teams adopt them without disrupting delivery
• Mentor programmers across multiple teams in both software development and AI programming, as well as represent EPE's technical direction in cross-org conversations with other programming leaders and executives at Epic

Benefits

• Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision HRA
• Long Term Disability
• Life Insurance
• 401k with competitive match
• Robust mental well-being program through Modern Health (free therapy and coaching for employees & dependents)
• Company events
• Company-wide paid breaks
• Unlimited PTO and sick time
• Paid sabbatical for 7 years of employment

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed