Principal Engineer, Bluebook Platform

Role Overview

• Drive technical direction across multiple teams and systems, ensuring decisions support both immediate delivery needs and long-term platform goals.
• Translate ambiguous business needs, emerging opportunities, and complex technical challenges into actionable technical strategies and execution plans.
• Help teams evaluate tradeoffs, identify risks, and make informed architectural decisions in complex and evolving problem spaces.
• Partner with Engineering Managers, Architects, and senior+ engineers to align technical investments, reduce duplication, and improve platform cohesion.
• Influence the evolution of shared services, platform capabilities, engineering standards, and development practices across the organization.
• Lead technical discovery, prototyping, and experimentation efforts that help shape future product and platform direction while reducing implementation risk.
• Promote thoughtful adoption of emerging technologies, including AI-assisted engineering and agentic development practices, while balancing innovation with reliability, maintainability, and operational excellence.
• Establish technical patterns, decision frameworks, and architectural guardrails that enable teams to move faster while maintaining quality and consistency.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor across teams, helping stakeholders align around technical approaches, priorities, and tradeoffs.
• Partner with Product, Design, Data, and Engineering leaders to shape roadmaps, evaluate opportunities, and solve high-impact organizational challenges.
• Build consensus across technical and non-technical stakeholders when requirements, priorities, or technical approaches are not initially aligned.
• Foster alignment across teams working on interconnected systems, ensuring local decisions support broader platform goals and organizational outcomes.
• Mentor senior engineers, lead engineers, and emerging technical leaders through coaching, design reviews, and technical guidance.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and create clarity around engineering standards, architectural decisions, and platform strategy.
• Support hiring, interviewing, and development of engineering talent across the organization.
• Contribute to a culture of experimentation, continuous improvement, engineering excellence, and shared ownership.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience building and operating cloud-native software systems
• Demonstrated success influencing technical direction beyond a single team through collaboration, persuasion, and strong technical judgment.
• Deep experience with JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, React, Node.js, AWS, and serverless architectures, along with curiosity about emerging technologies and AI-assisted development.
• Experience leading complex architectural discussions and technical strategy across cloud-native platforms, distributed systems, and evolving organizational priorities.
• Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, product leaders, and non-technical stakeholders, translating complex concepts into actionable decisions.
• A systems-thinking mindset with the ability to balance platform health, business outcomes, engineering velocity, and long-term platform reuse.
• Experience driving alignment across teams without relying on direct authority.
• A collaborative leadership style that prioritizes organizational success over ownership of any individual system.

Tech Stack

• AWS
• Cloud
• Distributed Systems
• JavaScript
• Node.js
• Python
• React
• TypeScript

Benefits

• Annual bonuses and opportunities for merit-based raises and promotions
• A mission-driven workplace where your impact matters
• A team that invests in your development and success