Principal Software Engineer, Platform Enablement

Role Overview

• Define and drive the multi-year technical strategy for Shippo's platform capabilities across cloud infrastructure, developer experience, and security
• Establish architectural guardrails and governance frameworks that enable teams to move fast while maintaining security and reliability
• Design high-level systems that solve significantly complex problems involving cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and security tooling
• Partner with Staff Engineers across Engineering to ensure clear ownership, system boundaries, and operational health
• Establish company-wide engineering standards for infrastructure, deployment practices, and security by default
• Create organizational mechanisms (templates, service catalogs, automated guardrails) that ensure teams maintain excellence without requiring direct oversight
• Drive stronger application standards through self-service tooling and golden paths; reduce platform fragmentation and prevent siloed solutions
• Identify and eliminate systemic organizational barriers that slow engineering velocity or create toil
• Design and deliver solutions that maximize impact across the organization
• from cost optimization to security automation to developer productivity
• Conduct early investigation, prototyping, and experimentation to validate approaches before scaling across teams
• Mentor and influence the career growth of Senior and Staff Engineers across platform teams
• Navigate complex trade-offs (cost vs. security vs. velocity) with company-wide implications and drive adoption of difficult decisions
• Partner with Security team to drive automation and secure-by-default practices into engineering workflows
• Drive ownership and cost transparency for platform services that product teams consume
• Maintain tight feedback loops with product teams to ensure platform capabilities directly address pain points
• Lead proactive reviews of operational and system health across platform services
• Produce long-lasting artifacts (talks, documentation, frameworks) that serve as force multipliers for the organization
• Typically split time between shipping code, prototyping, libraries, and tooling (30%) and driving designs and standards in reviews (70%)

Requirements

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in platform engineering, distributed systems, or infrastructure
• Strong hands-on software development skills with the ability to write production-quality code, build prototypes, and develop internal tooling and libraries
• Proven track record leading multi-year, org-wide technical initiatives at high-growth technology companies
• Hands-on experience with cloud cost optimization, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and/or container orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, or improving engineering productivity at scale
• Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy that aligns with business objectives and anticipate industry changes
• Track record of building consensus across engineering leadership on complex architectural decisions
• Experience establishing engineering standards and/or governance frameworks that scale
• Proven ability to mentor senior technical talent and influence career growth
• Excellent judgment in navigating trade-offs between competing priorities (cost, security, velocity, technical debt)
• Strong communication skills
• able to translate complex technical concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• able to investigate, analyze, and prototype solutions before committing to broad rollouts
• Strong analytical and data-driven decision making skills
• Proven ability to build trust and collaborate effectively with product teams, security teams, and engineering leadership
• Track record of driving engineering culture improvements and best practices adoption
• Experience participating in hiring processes with a strong bar for technical excellence
• BS or MS degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Tech Stack

• Cloud
• Distributed Systems
• Kubernetes

Benefits

• Healthcare coverage for medical, dental, and vision (90% covered by the company, incl. dependents).
• Pets coverage is also available!
• Take-as-much-as-you-need vacation policy & flexible working hours
• One week-long company wide winter slow down
• 3 Volunteer Days Off (VTOs)
• WFH stipend to set up your home office
• Charity donation match up to $100
• Dedicated programs, coaching, tools, and resources for your professional and career growth as well as an individual learning stipend for your personal and focused growth
• Fun team in person time through our Shippos Everywhere program which includes regular team and company off-sites throughout the year as well as local Shippos gatherings throughout the year.