Principal Software Engineer, Backend

Headspace is a company focused on transforming mental healthcare to improve the health and happiness of people globally. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will lead the architecture and design of high-scale applications, drive engineering excellence, and mentor engineers while shaping the technical foundation of the platform.

Responsibilities:

• Lead architecture and design of high-scale, low-latency applications that are core to Headspace’s business and member experience
• Define long-term technical strategies and implementation paths for complex systems
• Own and drive engineering excellence across multiple domains or squads. Write high-quality, performant, and testable code — primarily in Typescript and Python — and set the standard for craftsmanship across the organization
• Shape product and platform evolution by partnering with PMs, EMs, and stakeholders across Product, Data, Security, and Infrastructure to align technical vision with business goals
• Author technical specs and RFCs that guide not only your product pillar, but the entire company through critical design decisions
• Take end-to-end ownership of features, from ideation and architecture to monitoring in production
• Mentor and elevate engineers across levels, helping them scale their impact while promoting inclusive and empowering team dynamics
• Drive operational excellence by developing resilient systems, implementing observability, and guiding production support practices. Lead efforts to improve system reliability, developer velocity, and cost efficiency
• Act as a thought leader and multiplier, identifying systemic issues and architecting platform-level solutions with reusability and extensibility in mind
• Provide a point of escalation for engineering teams facing complex technical challenges
• Define coding standards, development processes, and best practices to ensure high-quality software development across engineering
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices, evaluating their potential application and driving innovation within the software engineering and tech team broadly

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of building and scaling production-grade APIs and distributed backend systems
• Deep expertise in system design and software architecture, with the ability to decompose complex problems into scalable, maintainable components
• Extensive experience with Node.js, TypeScript, and Python especially in the context of building high-scale backend services
• Experience leading the definition, design, and delivery of complex software features in asynchronous and distributed team environments
• Strong hands-on experience with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, along with building and maintaining robust CI/CD pipelines for reliable, automated delivery
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills—you can influence technical direction, align stakeholders, and clearly articulate trade-offs and decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading cross-functional technical initiatives across teams
• Ownership mindset: you thrive in ambiguity, consistently raise the bar, and take accountability for outcomes across teams
• Comfortable making strategic technical decisions and coaching others through uncertainty, with a pragmatic eye on long-term impact and technical debt
• Ability to balance technical excellence with product and business priorities, making decisions aligned with company goals
• BS/MS degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Demonstrated success designing and maintaining high-availability systems, with strong observability practices (metrics, logging, alerting)
• Deep knowledge of database design, data modeling, and query performance optimization across both relational and NoSQL systems
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and services (e.g., AWS, GCP, Kubernetes) and modern DevOps practices
• Track record of improving engineering velocity and reducing tech debt at scale
• Strong debugging skills and comfort working within complex, distributed systems
• Demonstrated ability to drive build vs. buy vs. refactor decisions with long-term implications in mind
• Experience designing or maintaining Server-Driven UI (SDUI) systems to enable dynamic, schema-based UI rendering across web and mobile clients