Principal Software Engineer (Backend)

Location: Remote within and residence in the continental United States; immigration sponsorship is not available.

Salary: $148,437–$185,547 per year for the Principal level.

Company

hirify.global expands access to knowledge and education through JSTOR, Portico, and hirify.global S+R.

What you will do

• Define the multi-year backend technology strategy and architectural roadmap for JSTOR Books and royalty payment platforms.
• Lead architecture for distributed services, APIs, batch processing, data integrations, ordering, fulfillment, and royalty payments.
• Design and improve highly available systems using Java or Python, with attention to scalability, resiliency, observability, and performance.
• Drive AI-assisted development, code review, anomaly detection, and LLM-assisted support and diagnostics.
• Establish engineering standards, SLOs, health metrics, reliability practices, and reusable platform capabilities.
• Mentor engineers and technical leaders while aligning Product, AI, Data Science, Platform Engineering, Finance, CRM, and external partners.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems, including backend architecture and technical leadership.
• Deep expertise with Java or Python, service-oriented architectures, REST APIs, asynchronous processing, event-driven systems, and cloud-native architecture.
• Experience with Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling, relational and NoSQL databases, caching, and messaging platforms.
• Experience defining technology strategy, leading cross-team architectural initiatives, and producing strategy and architecture documents adopted by stakeholders.
• Experience owning systems where correctness has direct financial consequences, including ordering, billing, payments, royalties, or revenue.
• Practical experience with idempotency, deduplication, outbox and event-driven patterns, reconciliation, and recovery from partial failure.
• Experience incrementally improving production platforms, integrating CRM, Finance, or tax systems, and managing file-based and API-based partner contracts.
• Ability to define reliability programs with measurable outcomes, communicate architectural tradeoffs, and influence engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Domain experience in publishing, digital content licensing, royalty or rights management, or revenue operations.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote work for employees distributed across the continental United States, with physical offices in New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Medical, dental, and vision plans, plus an employer-paid 10% retirement contribution.
• 22 days of paid time off, 11 paid holidays, up to 12 paid sick days, and paid parental and caregiver leave.
• Values include belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust, with a focus on inclusion and collaboration.

Hiring process

• Apply online through the hirify.global career site; application questions can be directed to careers@hirify.global.org.
• Reasonable accommodations for the application or hiring process are available by contacting accommodations@hirify.global.org.