Principal Software Engineer (Engineering Ops)

Stable Kernel • Atlanta, GA

20h • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Principal Software Engineer at Stable Kernel, you will be instrumental in ensuring the success of our clients' innovative and transformational initiatives. You will collaborate daily with engineers and product team members, influence product roadmaps, apply software development best practices, and continuously learn new technologies. Your expertise, reliability, and consultative approach will make you a trusted resource for stakeholders and teammates. This role can be structured as an individual contributor or a people manager with individual contributor responsibilities.

Requirements

• Extensive experience with a wide variety of frontend and backend languages, with the ability to learn new ones quickly (current stack includes Typescript, Golang, React, and React Native).
• Intimate working knowledge of current agentic practices and staying ahead of the curve in agentic development, including Claude Code, OpenCode, Spec-driven-development, and agent orchestrators.
• Expertise in AWS, including driving cloud architecture strategy, building secure, scalable, and cost-optimized systems using services like ECS/Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, RDS/Postgres, S3, CloudWatch, KMS, and IAM; guiding teams in adopting cloud-native patterns and operational excellence.
• Experience driving infrastructure strategy and automation using Pulumi or Terraform, embedding Infrastructure as Code into development workflows, and enabling secure, scalable cloud environments.
• Familiarity with vector databases (e.g., pg_vector) for similarity search and AI/ML-powered applications.
• Experience deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications securely and reliably using Kubernetes.
• 10+ years of experience delivering and evolving production systems across diverse technical stacks, platforms, and architectures.
• Extensive experience serving as a trusted consultant to stakeholders and cross-functional teams, providing expert guidance on backend service design, delivery, and integration.
• Degree in Computer Science or relevant field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with Go for building performant, scalable backend services in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Designing and implementing scalable and cost-effective solutions by balancing opportunity and complexity.
• Setting codebase health standards and promoting best practices across the organization.
• Clarifying strategic outcomes and influencing roadmaps and projects.
• Identifying, suggesting, and driving improvements in customer end-to-end experiences.
• Assisting with work estimation for new business and coaching others in estimation best practices.
• Coordinating efforts across the entire company.
• Influencing the organization to implement changes that support your work.
• Advising teams throughout the company.
• Designing long-term roadmaps with minimal direction.
• Translating customer and business needs into projects and simplifying complex situations.
• Coaching and mentoring others in navigating ambiguity.
• Decomposing strategic direction into actionable projects.
• Planning, communicating, and executing to solve challenging problems.
• Ensuring alignment with long-term objectives and fostering a culture of informed decision-making and innovation.
• Anticipating risks and driving simplification to mitigate them proactively.
• Escalating issues while solving them in parallel and keeping others informed.
• Proposing new organization-level processes to enhance team throughput, employee happiness, or product engagement.
• Driving best practices throughout the organization.
• Mentoring and nurturing potential in others, providing strategic guidance, and helping develop career paths.
• Leading projects and setting strategic direction for technology areas.
• Leading multiple project teams and influencing decision-making at higher organizational levels.
• Demonstrating strong stakeholder management, negotiation, and problem-solving skills in complex scenarios.
• Mentoring and developing other leaders, fostering innovation, and contributing to organizational goals.

Benefits

• Company-subsidized health, vision, and dental plan premium options beginning on the first day of employment
• 401k with above-average company matching
• Fully paid Group Life, Short and Long Term Disability, and AD&D insurance
• Optional Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account participation
• Voluntary Life, Critical Illness, and Accident insurance
• EAP and Health Advocacy program available at no cost to employees and their dependents
• $3000+ annual industry educational budget
• Paid time off and paid holidays
• Access to Perks at Work program featuring a variety of discounted products and services

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Associate degree