Principal Software Engineer

Summary

Join Pindrop, a leading innovator in voice authentication and fraud prevention, and contribute to building cutting-edge solutions for a safer digital landscape. As a Principal Engineer, you will architect, build, and scale application-layer services supporting fraud detection and secure identity workflows. You will lead modernization efforts, including migration to microservices and event-driven architectures, and design authentication and authorization systems. You will also mentor engineers, guide architectural decisions, and participate in incident response. Pindrop offers a dynamic and supportive workplace with a remote-first culture and numerous benefits. The ideal candidate possesses 15+ years of experience in application server design, fraud prevention, and authentication systems, along with expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and cloud platforms. Pindrop values innovation, customer advocacy, excellence, and impact.

Requirements

• A seasoned Principal Engineer or equivalent with 15+ years of experience across application server design, fraud prevention, and authentication systems
• A rare systems thinker who’s equally comfortable contributing code, refactoring monoliths, or designing fault-tolerant architectures
• An advocate for open standards with direct experience contributing to core frameworks and developing application infrastructure from the ground up
• Adept at guiding teams through architecture transitions while maintaining uptime, security, and performance
• Equally motivated by teaching others as you are by solving complex technical problems
• Passionate about building trust and safety into systems from the ground up
• Built and scaled application servers, load balancers, and high-performance middleware with expertise in Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, ElasticSearch, and Kubernetes
• Deep knowledge of IAM, including OAuth2, OpenID, SSO, and MFA integrations (e.g., Twilio, SendGrid)
• Experience decoupling large-scale monoliths and implementing resilient microservices architectures using queues, caching, and fault-tolerant patterns (e.g., Redis fallback, Kubernetes HA)
• Hands-on experience with monitoring, test automation, and CI/CD systems like Prometheus, ELK, and Kubernetes-based pipelines
• Background in cloud platforms (AWS, GCP), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and container orchestration (EKS, GKE)
• Contributor to industry specifications and advocate for open-source tools that enhance software engineering quality
• Demonstrated ability to lead hybrid teams, mentor junior engineers, and drive adoption of architectural best practices
• Understanding of cloud services offered by the chosen platform, including computing, storage, databases, networking, and security
• Experience in Docker, container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes, GKE, or AWS ECS/EKS
• Proficiency in monitoring tools like Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch or Azure Monitor
• Experience with log management systems like ELK Stack, CloudWatch Logs, and GCP Logging
• Experience with Chef/Ansible, Bash, and Python scripting
• Knowledge of some or all of our toolset: GitHub Actions, Grafana, Jenkins, JFrog

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and scale application-layer services that support fraud detection, secure identity, and customer trust workflows
• Lead modernization efforts, including migration from monolith to microservices and high-throughput event-driven architectures
• Drive design of authentication, authorization, and MFA systems (SSO, OAuth2, SAML, OpenID), enabling secure user access at scale
• Introduce technical patterns and coding frameworks to improve consistency, maintainability, and developer velocity across teams
• Partner with platform teams to increase service uptime, fault tolerance, and system observability
• Serve as a technical advisor on developer productivity tools, testing frameworks, and infrastructure resilience (e.g., Kubernetes test automation, multi-database replication strategies)
• Mentor engineers across teams, lead design reviews, and guide high-stakes architectural decisions
• Participate in the incident response and on-call rotation to reinforce a culture of operational excellence
• Designing network topologies and architectures to meet the organization’s requirements for scalability, performance, and security
• Designing and implementing redundancy and failover mechanisms to ensure high availability in the cloud
• Configure and troubleshoot Application and Network Load balancers
• Use scripting tools like Python, Ansible, and Bash to automate daily tasks

Preferred Qualifications

Working experience in Istio is a plus

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including equity for all employees
• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO)
• 4 company-wide rest days in 2025, where the entire company rests and recharges!
• Generous health and welfare plans to choose from - including one employer-paid “employee-only” plan!
• Best-in-class Health Savings Account (HSA) employer contribution
• Affordable vision and dental plans for you and your family
• Employer-provided life and disability coverage with additional supplemental options
• Paid Parental Leave - Equal for all parents, including birth, adoptive & foster parents
• Give your newest addition to the family one year of diaper delivery! It’s our way of welcoming new Pindroplets to the family!
• Identity protection through Norton LifeLock
• Remote-first culture with opportunities for in-person team events
• Recurring monthly home office allowance
• When we need a break, we keep it fun with happy hours, ping pong and foosball, drinks and snacks, and monthly massages!
• Remote and in-person team activities (think cheese tastings, chess tournaments, talent shows, murder mysteries, and more!)
• Company holidays
• Annual professional development and learning benefit
• Pick your own Apple MacBook Pro
• Retirement plan with competitive 401(k) match
• Wellness Program including Employee Assistance Program, 24/7 Telemedicine