Principal Software Engineer

8th Light

. Build trust with clients and understand their domains and objectives .

Posted 11/7/2026full-timeRemote • United StatesLead💰 $151,535 - $220,881 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive experience in platform engineering, including building and shipping production-grade platforms and integrating AI/ML features. Proven ability to lead technical strategy, mentor teams, and facilitate alignment across diverse stakeholders.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Platform EngineeringAI/ML Feature IntegrationProduction-Grade Software DeliveryArchitecture Problem SolvingConsulting Engagement Leadership

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills

JavaC#/.NETPythonTypeScriptJavaScriptReactGoRubyScalaSQL

Soft Skills

Client Trust BuildingLeadershipMentoringCollaborationCommunication

Tools & Technologies

DatabricksDevSecOpsDevOpsMLOpsInfrastructure as CodeLangChainLlamaIndexCrewAIAutoGenN8n

Industry Keywords

Platform StrategyScalabilityObservabilitySecurityReliabilityPerformanceMaintainabilityFeedback ConversationsTechnical RoadmapsStakeholder Relationships

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

JavaJavaScriptPythonReactRubyRustScalaSQLTypeScriptGo.NET

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build trust with clients and understand their domains and objectives
Drive platform engineering work and connect long-term technical vision to shipped outcomes
Lead platform strategy and delivery across diverse platform types
Balance technology choices while delivering high-quality work within deadlines
Advise clients on architecture, scalability, and platform evolution
Collaborate across the full ML lifecycle from data ingestion and preprocessing through model deployment, integration, and performance monitoring
Surface new technical approaches and product solutions
Lead feedback conversations, retrospectives, strategy sessions, and technical deep-dives
Document outcomes and drive action items
Design and manage high-level technical roadmaps for large engagements
Coach client engineering teams and transfer knowledge
Influence client CTOs and executive decisions
Partner with account teams on planning, opportunity identification, stakeholder relationships, and pre-sales scope shaping
Identify, mitigate, and resolve blockers to team progress
Mentor internally, lead or design workshops, represent 8th Light in the tech community, and support hiring
Demonstrate leadership in scalable system design, modular architecture, and platform- or product-oriented development
Apply testing strategies, observability, fault tolerance, secure engineering practices, and architectural patterns

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of long-term, repeated success across a variety of projects
Deep consulting acumen, technical expertise, and product thinking
Experience building and shipping production-grade platforms, reusable foundations, tools, infrastructure, and workflows
Experience taking AI and agentic systems from prototype to production, including infrastructure, authentication, and observability
Experience delivering high-stakes consulting engagements across multiple language paradigms, stacks, ecosystems, and client industries
Experience leading production-grade software delivery using languages and frameworks including Java, C#/.NET, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Go, Ruby, Scala, R, Rust, and SQL
Experience building or integrating AI/ML features, including recommendation engines, NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, RAG pipelines, and agents
Experience leading modernization and replatforming efforts
Experience solving architecture-level problems involving scalability, security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and observability
Experience facilitating alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders
Experience mentoring teams and improving team practices
Strongly preferred: platform engineering, Data Engineering including Databricks, production agentic systems, RAG pipelines, vector search, LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, AutoGen, n8n, DevSecOps, DevOps, MLOps, and Infrastructure as Code

Benefits

Comp & perks

Robust L&D program with unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform
Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development
Coworking support for the global team
Flexible PTO
12 weeks of new parent leave for eligible employees
Access to coworking spaces for team members outside hub cities