Principal Full Stack Engineer (Fully Remote- India)

Overview

Principal Software Engineer, the most senior individual contributor in the engineering team, setting technical direction across two product squads while staying deeply hands-on. Reports to the HoE and works on the client's v3 platform (event-driven, domain-driven, AI-augmented) across PHP/Laravel, Next.js and AWS/GCP. Does not manage people directly.

What you'll do

• Own the architecture and technical direction for core platform domains used by both squads (e.g. event-driven workflows, modular boundaries, AI capabilities).
• Spend 60–80% of your time hands-on: designing, coding, reviewing, pairing, and debugging in Laravel, Next.js and cloud environments.
• Lead the technical discovery and delivery of high-impact initiatives, especially those that cross team boundaries or require significant architectural change.
• Define, document, and evangelize architectural principles, coding standards, and patterns for scalable, resilient, observable systems.
• Raise the bar for quality: champion shift-left testing, CI/CD improvements, and production observability; model best practices in test design and validation.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and feedback, helping them own systems end-to-end.
• Evaluate and prototype emerging technologies (e.g. Vertex AI, GenAI workflows, data pipelines) and guide pragmatic adoption into product and platform.
• Act as a senior engineering voice in roadmap planning, estimation and trade-off decisions.
• Work across both product squads rather than being embedded in one team, focusing on cross-cutting systems and the hardest technical problems.
• Partner with Engineering Leadership on long-term architecture and with Tech Leads on execution and engineering practices.

What you'll need

• 8+ years in software engineering, including experience as a staff/principal engineer or architect in a SaaS company.
• Deep expertise in backend engineering with Laravel (Laravel 10+ and PHP 8+) or similar languages, SQL/relational databases, caching, and RESTful APIs.
• Strong frontend design and architectural experience with React/Next.js.
• Experience working with scalable, secure cloud infrastructure (AWS required, and GCP).
• Familiarity with event-driven or modular architectures and containerized environments (e.g., EKS/Kubernetes).
• Deep understanding of software testing strategies and CI/CD pipelines.
• Feature delivery velocity using AI-driven tools (Copilot, Gemini, test automation, scaffolding).
• Building AI-augmented product experiences (LLM API usage, prompt design).
• Coaching others on integrating GenAI into workflows.
• Resilient and adaptable, proactive problem solver, clear communicator, product-minded, leads through influence, documentation-first thinker.
• Lead by example in test strategy and validation; own test coverage, pipeline health, and regression control.

Nice to have

• Experience with data products like Looker, BigQuery, or analytics pipelines.
• Experience with ML pipelines or distributed system performance tuning.
• Agent AI architecture experience.
• Exposure to event-driven systems, asynchronous workflows, or message queues (e.g. AWS SQS, Kafka, Pub/Sub).
• Experience with design systems and frontend architecture.
• Experience with platform engineering or building shared infrastructure in modular monoliths.
• Any exposure to AI-driven tooling or systems.

Details

• Fully remote, India.
• Flexibility in work hours and location, with a focus on managing energy rather than time.