Principal Software Engineer

HackerOne is a global leader in Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). As a Principal Software Engineer, you will define and drive the architectural vision for the HackerOne Platform, ensuring scalability and reliability while collaborating with cross-functional teams to translate business strategies into actionable architectural strategies.

Responsibilities:

• Define and evolve the architectural vision for HackerOne’s platform and core systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance
• Partner with Product, Platform, and Security teams to translate long-term business and product goals into actionable architectural strategies
• Collaborate with Principal and Distinguished Engineers to align on technical direction, establish shared standards, and evolve HackerOne’s system design principles
• Lead major cross-team initiatives that modernize our architecture, improve observability, and reduce complexity across our systems
• Mentor and guide engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement
• Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies, including AI, GenAI, and LLM-driven architectures, to enhance the intelligence and effectiveness of our platform
• Drive architectural governance and documentation, ensuring long-term maintainability and transparency in decision-making
• Communicate architectural direction clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, building alignment through clarity and evidence
• Within your first 30–60–90 days, you’ll move from deeply understanding our systems and architecture, to identifying strategic opportunities, to leading architectural initiatives that impact teams company-wide

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering and system architecture within a SaaS environment
• Proven track record designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems, ideally using Ruby on Rails, ReactJS, TypeScript, GraphQL, and ElasticSearch/OpenSearch
• Hands-on experience with GenAI and LLM integration in production systems; understanding of model lifecycle or AI-assisted architectures is a strong plus
• Demonstrated experience leading architectural initiatives spanning multiple teams and product domains
• Excellent communication and influence skills, capable of aligning technical and non-technical stakeholders around shared goals
• Experience driving modernization and scalability initiatives in complex, legacy systems
• Deep knowledge of system reliability, security, and performance optimization in high-availability environments
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and elevate architectural and coding standards across an organization