Principal Software Engineer, AI Platform (Python/React)

Teladoc Health is transforming how better health happens, and they are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead their engineering team. In this role, you will provide technical direction, oversee project execution, and ensure engineering excellence while mentoring a team of engineers and driving innovation.

Responsibilities:

• Lead technical design for platform features and services, breaking ambiguous requirements into clear, incremental designs and stories for your team and adjacent partners
• Implement backend services in Python/FastAPI and React frontends end-to-end, owning a continuous stream of stories from idea to production
• Define and use clear API contracts and data flows between services and UIs, creating patterns and templates others can follow
• Champion high-quality engineering practices, including code reviews, documentation, and maintainable, testable designs
• Establish and evolve automated testing approaches (unit, integration, end-to-end) and incorporate them into everyday development
• Establish CI/CD pipelines and release workflows so the team can ship small, safe changes frequently and confidently
• Own the operational lifecycle of the features and services you build, including monitoring, observability, on-call participation, and incident follow-up
• Design and implement secure-by-default solutions, including robust authentication/authorization, input validation, and safe handling of sensitive data
• Identify and address reliability and performance risks early, proposing concrete technical improvements and sequencing them into the roadmap
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, helping them grow their impact and autonomy through pairing, design discussions, and feedback
• Sets technical decision frameworks used across teams; aligns directors/PMs on investment strategy; resolves cross‑team conflicts with data and clear rationale

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; equivalent work experience is acceptable
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record of leading and delivering large-scale, complex projects
• Strong proficiency with Python and modern web backends (FastAPI, Flask, Django, or similar) and solid understanding of HTTP, API design, and data modeling
• Significant experience with React (or a comparable SPA framework) and building production frontends that talk to backend APIs
• Demonstrated ability to own features end-to-end: from shaping requirements through design, implementation, testing, deployment, and support
• Experience designing and working with distributed systems or multi-service architectures (e.g., service boundaries, async jobs, integration patterns)
• Solid understanding of observability and operations for production systems (metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerting, incident response)
• Strong understanding of security fundamentals (authentication, authorization, secure data handling) and how they apply to web services and UIs
• Deep familiarity with automated testing and CI/CD, and a track record of improving engineering workflows and quality
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; comfortable working closely with product, design, and other stakeholders
• Proven ability to provide technical leadership in a hands-on way: unblocking others, making clear decisions, and raising the bar through code and reviews
• Experience in early-stage or small platform teams where engineers wear multiple hats and balance shipping with building foundations
• Experience with Azure and containerized deployments (or similar cloud-native environments)
• Experience building platforms (developer platforms, data platforms, or similar) that serve multiple product teams
• Exposure to AI/ML or data-intensive applications (e.g., integrating with model inference APIs, data pipelines, or analytical data stores)