Principal Engineer (Cloud Distributed Systems)

TL;DR

Principal Engineer (Cloud Distributed Systems): Designing and scaling high‑throughput, cloud‑native distributed systems for a legal data intelligence platform with an accent on event‑driven architectures and large‑scale data processing. Focus on establishing organization‑wide technical standards, driving agentic AI engineering, and migrating batch pipelines to streaming workflows.

Location: Remote or Hybrid (Must be based in Illinois, USA)

Salary: $210,000 – $314,000

Company

hirify.global is a legal data intelligence company providing an AI‑powered cloud platform that helps users organize data and discover the truth for high‑stakes legal work.

What you will do

• Drive the design and architecture of secure full‑stack cloud services processing petabytes of data weekly.
• Define and lead organization‑wide technical vision and long‑term platform and data strategy.
• Establish enterprise standards for system scalability, reliability, maintainability, and security.
• Lead the transition from batch‑oriented pipelines to streaming‑first, continuously processing workflows.
• Remain deeply hands‑on by designing, implementing, and operating production software.
• Establish best practices and tooling for AI‑assisted and agentic development within the Enrichment domain.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience designing, building, and operating complex cloud‑native distributed systems.
• Recognized authority in architecture and distributed systems with a track record of defining organization‑wide standards.
• Deep expertise in high‑throughput data processing and transformation at scale (batch and streaming).
• Experience with Kubernetes, event‑driven architectures, and durable orchestration engines like Temporal.
• Strong grounding in reliability, performance, security, and observability under strict SLOs.
• Proven ability to align technical vision with company strategy and influence executive‑level decisions.

Nice to have

• Background in legal tech, AI‑enabled platforms, or regulated domains.
• Experience with AI‑development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code.
• Hands‑on experience scaling streaming frameworks like Kafka, Event Hub, or Apache Spark.
• External thought leadership or industry contributions.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive total compensation including base salary, annual performance bonus, and equity program.
• Comprehensive health and retirement programs and wellness resources.
• Flexible time off through discretionary time off (DTO) and parental leave for all caregivers.
• Home office stipend and two annual company breaks.
• Engineering culture focused on continuous delivery, strong observability, and end‑to‑end ownership.