Principal Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Location: Hybrid in Washington DC, Austin, New York City, or San Francisco. Offer-stage candidates may be asked to attend an in-person interview at a hirify.global office or hub.

Estimated annual salary: $230,000–$288,000 for Bay Area hires, $220,000–$275,000 for Washington and New York City hires, or $200,000–$250,000 for Austin hires. Compensation may vary by work location.

Company

hirify.global operates a global network and security platform that protects and accelerates millions of Internet properties.

What you will do

• Own the technical coherence of a platform spanning globally distributed key-value storage, progressive release and configuration delivery, testing, and health mediation.
• Build systems that make safe changes and deployments easier across hirify.global’s Edge and control-plane platforms.
• Write production code, design new distributed systems, and review proposals from senior engineers.
• Translate platform needs into reusable primitives for engineering teams.
• Deliver Health Mediated Deployment projects tracked by senior leadership.
• Help integrate LLMs into engineering processes and systems.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience leading complex, organization-wide technical initiatives.
• Strong technical leadership and influence without direct authority, including consensus-building, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing adopted architectural patterns.
• Experience designing, building, and managing high-volume software applications at global scale.
• Expertise in at least one modern strongly typed programming language.
• Knowledge of API design standards, patterns, and best practices.
• Experience using leading LLMs to plan, write, test, and deploy software.

Nice to have

• Experience scaling and simplifying high-scale configuration management systems.
• Familiarity with Google’s Prodspec and Annealing systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes, RocksDB or similar data stores, and large-scale health-checking platforms.
• Public evidence of technical leadership through conference talks, technical writing, open-source contributions, or widely adopted architectural patterns.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity plan participation.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending accounts, and commuter spending accounts.
• Fertility and family-forming benefits, mental health support, and employee assistance programs.
• Disability, life, accident, 401(k), and employee stock participation plans.
• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave, plus parental, pregnancy, medical, and bereavement leave.
• Work focused on improving Internet reliability, security, and openness.