Principal Engineer

Matrix Global • USA,

4d

About The Position

The Principal Engineer is a hands-on senior individual contributor who serves as the CTO’s technical deputy and helps lead day-to-day engineering execution. Reporting directly to the CTO, the role owns routine engineering decisions, guides implementation, reviews code, supports developers, resolves blockers, and maintains delivery momentum. It combines broad full-stack expertise, architectural judgment, and pragmatic execution, while remaining actively involved in development rather than primarily managing people.

A central part of the role is establishing AI-agent-assisted development as a core engineering practice. The Principal Engineer uses AI coding agents throughout the software development lifecycle and establishes standards and safeguards that help the team build, debug, test, and review software with AI while maintaining quality, security, and reliability.

The role contributes to architecture and technical direction for a next-generation platform in partnership with the CTO and platform architect; builds and maintains production solutions across databases, backend services, frontend applications, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps; and supports both established systems and greenfield initiatives. It also collaborates with engineering, product, and research stakeholders, communicates technical decisions and risks, and supports knowledge sharing and distributed ownership.

The position requires full-time availability and at least three hours of daily overlap with U.S. Pacific morning hours. A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience, is required. Matrix describes itself as a global technology services and consulting company with more than 17,000 employees worldwide, and highlights competitive compensation and benefits, career development opportunities, and a diverse, inclusive culture.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of software engineering experience, including senior-level experience as a Senior, Staff, or Principal Engineer.
• Hands-on expertise across the full stack, including databases, backend development, frontend technologies, and cloud infrastructure or DevOps.
• Strong system design and architecture skills, including the ability to evaluate trade-offs and make pragmatic technical decisions.
• Experience building, debugging, testing, and maintaining production software across multiple technology layers.
• Regular, demonstrated fluency using AI coding agents for software development and debugging across the stack.
• Ability to establish engineering practices that help developers use AI agents without compromising quality, security, or reliability.
• Ability to work independently with ambiguous requirements and limited supervision.
• Sound judgment to make routine technical decisions and recognize when escalation is necessary.
• Pragmatic, outcome-oriented approach that favors effective solutions over unnecessary complexity.
• Ability to challenge technical decisions constructively and act as a trusted partner to executive technical leadership.
• Strong ownership, accountability, integrity, and follow-through.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• Proactive communication, transparency, early risk identification, and clear documentation.
• Ability to mentor and support engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Availability to work full-time as an embedded team member, with at least three hours of daily overlap with U.S. Pacific morning hours.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Broad knowledge of software engineering principles, modern development frameworks, cloud infrastructure, and emerging engineering practices.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building LLM-powered applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool use, or agentic workflows.
• Experience establishing AI-assisted engineering standards or introducing AI development practices across a team.
• Experience working on early-stage products, next-generation platforms, or greenfield engineering initiatives.
• Experience working closely with a CTO or another senior technical leader in a high-trust, fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the CTO’s technical deputy, own routine engineering decisions, and represent the CTO’s direction when needed.
• Manage day-to-day engineering execution, including pull request reviews, technical approvals, developer support, and issue resolution.
• Maintain alignment with the CTO through proactive communication, early escalation of risks, and transparent decision-making.
• Evaluate trade-offs, challenge assumptions constructively, and recommend improvements to technical and business outcomes.
• Partner with the CTO and platform architect on architecture and system design decisions for the next-generation platform.
• Evaluate technical options and select solutions suited to product requirements, operational needs, and anticipated growth.
• Translate product and research requirements into practical technical approaches and actionable implementation plans.
• Design, build, debug, and maintain solutions across databases, backend services, frontend applications, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps.
• Prototype capabilities, develop critical components, and provide technical expertise wherever needed.
• Lead by example through clean code, effective testing, sound engineering practices, and production-ready implementations.
• Champion AI coding agents across the engineering workflow, including implementation, debugging, investigation, testing, code review, and infrastructure-related work.
• Establish practical AI-agent usage standards and guardrails for context management, prompting, verification, security, and code quality.
• Help engineers use AI-assisted development effectively and responsibly, and assess where AI agents or human judgment are most appropriate.
• Maintain standards for code quality, reviews, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, and operational reliability.
• Support established systems and greenfield initiatives; improve documentation, knowledge sharing, and distributed ownership to reduce key-person dependencies.
• Identify delivery bottlenecks, resolve technical blockers, and keep engineering work progressing.
• Collaborate with the CTO, platform architect, engineering team, product, and research stakeholders; communicate decisions, trade-offs, dependencies, and risks clearly.
• Mentor and support engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and benefits.
• Meaningful career development opportunities.
• A challenging and engaging work environment.
• A diverse, inclusive culture that encourages collaboration, continuous learning, and growth.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal