Principal Engineer

DeepRunner AI seeks a Principal Engineer who sets technical direction through hands-on example. This role is ideal for an architect who still codes, reviews code, and mentors teams to build resilient, modular systems at scale.

You will define architectural standards across products, drive decisions on service boundaries and data models, and actively participate in production deployments. Your expertise in edge cases, failure modes, and zero-downtime changes is critical for enterprise-grade reliability.

Embrace AI as a productivity amplifier to prototype faster and review more code while fostering the growth of junior engineers around you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Set architectural direction across platforms and products.
• Drive decisions on service boundaries, data models, API contracts, and long-term system shape.
• Write, review, and ship production code; measure tenure in commits and architecture impact, not just presentations.
• Elevate team standards through rigorous code reviews that serve as teaching moments.
• Mentor engineers at all levels to accelerate their growth into stronger practitioners.
• Ensure operational excellence across development, deployment, and monitoring.
• Leverage modern AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor) daily to multiply reach.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of hands-on backend engineering with a track record shipping enterprise systems that customers depend on.
• Experience designing large-scale distributed systems and handling complex production details like migrations and backwards compatibility.
• An exemplary practitioner who takes pride in writing clean code and conducting thorough reviews.
• Strong architectural judgment to balance simplicity, modularity, and resilience while explaining trade-offs clearly.
• A proven history of developing other engineers with concrete examples of accelerated growth.
• Active engagement with open source projects through meaningful contributions.
• Fluency in modern AI coding assistants and the ability to articulate how they enhance engineering workflows.
• Excellent communication skills, recognizing that clarity is a core technical skill.