Principal Software Engineer

HappyCo builds modern property management software that helps owners and operators deliver better living experiences at scale. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural design and technical strategy during a pivotal phase of platform evolution, focusing on modernizing legacy systems and enabling teams to work efficiently through well-documented patterns.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and design platform systems and services for enterprise-scale SaaS software, with an emphasis on scalability, resilience, and long-term maintainability
• Assess existing architectural patterns and system designs across the HappyCo software suite, identifying opportunities to reduce technical debt and simplify complexity
• Define and document target architectures, guiding principles, and standards that enable teams to build faster and more consistently
• Develop architectural proposals, technical plans, and RFCs, and guide them through internal review and decision-making processes
• Lead Technical Design Reviews for Staff Engineers and Tech Leads, ensuring alignment with documented patterns and platform direction
• Drive platform modernization initiatives, including the deprecation of legacy systems in a way that minimizes risk and customer impact
• Provide hands-on technical leadership by contributing POCs, reference implementations, and other artifacts that accelerate shared understanding and adoption
• Enable and support external software teams by providing clear documentation, repeatable processes, and timely, decisive architectural guidance
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to PDE leadership, promoting and evangelizing architectural direction and best practices across the organization

Requirements:

• Deep experience designing and evolving complex, production-grade SaaS platforms
• A strong track record of leading architectural change while maintaining system stability
• Expertise in modern software architectures, including event-driven systems, service orchestration, and platform design
• Demonstrated ability to reduce technical debt in ways that measurably improve team and organizational velocity
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence across teams and levels of seniority
• Comfort operating in ambiguous problem spaces and making high-impact technical decisions