Principal Software Engineer

Q-CTRL•Los Angeles, CA

8h•$220,000 - $320,000

About The Position

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the architectural evolution of Q-CTRLâs product portfolio, enabling faster delivery, greater scalability, and enhanced product team autonomy. This role is critical to realizing the Opal Suite architecture, a scalable and resilient ecosystem for supporting rapid product innovation and expansion. Reporting to the VP of Software Engineering, you will oversee efforts across multiple teams and departments, working closely with their technical leads, research and engineering managers. As a thought leader in system architecture, you will drive technical excellence across teams, guiding the development of a modular, high-performing architecture that supports seamless integrations and empowers product teams to innovate independently.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience as a passionate individual contributor with a focus on software product architecture.
Experience with DevOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code tools.
A physics background is not required however, a keen desire to rapidly learn and upskill in quantum computing technologies is critical.
Proven track record of leading cross-disciplinary architectural transformations, particularly in cloud-native and microservice environments.
Expertise in designing and implementing high-performance data storage, APIs, workflow orchestration, event-driven and distributed systems.
Exceptional technical documentation and communication skills (architecture diagrams, design documents, technical decisions).
Strong programming skills in languages like Python, Rust, or Go.

Nice To Haves

High performance computing and/or machine learning experience a bonus.

Responsibilities

Drive architectural direction as an individual contributor across products with an emphasis on back-end and platform engineering, yet with a mindset that is agnostic of a specific technology stack.
Influence technical strategy and OKRs, aligning stakeholders across multiple teams and seniority levels, with a horizon beyond 12 months.
Drive and set engineering excellence across the organisation, particularly around patterns and abstractions that span products and domains.
Oversee and often own large cross-team or even cross-department technical solutions, involving technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Mentor engineers at all levels on technical topics, particularly around system design, acting as dotted-line leader in some instances, with the assistance of an engineering manager.
Expertly articulate trade-offs in complex design to audiences inclusive of executive and senior leadership.
Spend around 30% of time coding and 70% of time leading, flexing these percentages depending on company needs.