Principal Software Engineer

Cotality • Austin, TX

11d • Hybrid

About The Position

A Principal Software Development Engineer leads the design, development, and testing of complex software systems and applications. This senior-level position is responsible for creating scalable, high-quality software solutions while providing technical leadership, driving engineering excellence, and providing mentorship to engineering teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in software development, with demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives across teams.
• Strong understanding of the full software development lifecycle — from requirements and architecture through build, test, and deployment.
• Extensive experience designing and implementing systems that scale — whether applications, platforms, internal tooling, or developer infrastructure.
• Strong programming skills across multiple languages and stacks, with a broad generalist mindset — comfortable working across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and DevOps as needed.
• Experience driving adoption of new tools, practices, or platforms across engineering organizations — not just building, but getting teams to use what you build.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools and workflows (GitHub Copilot, LLM APIs, agent frameworks, or similar).
• Ability to provide technical leadership through architectural guidance, code reviews, and hands-on pairing — elevating the team's output, not just your own.
• Exceptional communication skills — comfortable presenting to leadership and pairing with engineers in the same day.
• Strong analytical thinking — able to assess technical opportunities, evaluate trade-offs, and make architectural decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the planning and execution of AI-native transformation initiatives across engineering teams — owning key technical workstreams end-to-end within the broader enablement program.
• Serve as a senior technical enablement resource across engineering teams — writing skills, context files, and AI workflow configurations that make teams AI-native in their actual repos.
• Own the enablement lifecycle for assigned areas: readiness assessments, AGENTS.md authoring, skill architecture, and adoption follow-through at organizational scale.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted SDLC practices — designing agent workflows, authoring specifications, and ensuring teams have the technical foundations to work effectively with AI tools.
• Architect reusable enablement patterns — skills, templates, frameworks, and reference implementations that compound across the organization rather than solving the same problem repeatedly.
• Lead the development of internal AI tooling and platforms as the team's capabilities grow — SDKs, integrations, and automation frameworks that accelerate adoption at scale.
• Bridge the gap between platform capabilities and team needs — identifying where teams are stuck, designing the right technical solutions, and feeding friction patterns back to platform teams.
• Provide technical leadership through architectural guidance, code reviews, and hands-on pairing — setting the engineering standard for the team.
• Operate across the full SDLC — from requirements and architecture through build, test, deploy, and delivery — ensuring enablement touches every phase, not just code generation.

Benefits

• Generous PTO and 11 paid holidays, plus well-being and volunteer time off.
• Up to 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave and a baby stipend.
• Multiple medical plan options with mental health and wellness support offerings.
• 401(k) with company match and vesting after one year.
• $400 annual well-being stipend and tuition assistance up to $5,250.
• Recognition Rewards, Referral bonuses, exclusive discounts and more!

What This Job Offers

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