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AHEAD is looking for an experienced Principal Engineer to help shape, build, and evolve the platforms that power our business. We’re a leading IT services provider, trusted by some of the world’s largest companies to design, build, run, and modernize their most important technology across cloud, data, AI, and security.
You’ll join an experienced engineering team that builds real products, adopts new tools early, sweats the details, and trades ideas constantly. Our current stack includes Next.js, JavaScript, Golang, dbt, Snowflake, and PostgreSQL. You’ll work across application, service, data, and platform layers, with the autonomy to make a visible impact on important enterprise systems.
This is a principal-level role for someone who can move comfortably between user needs, business outcomes, system architecture, implementation, and production support. We care about the depth of your engineering judgment more than a specific list of languages. Experience with equivalent technologies such as Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Elixir, Kotlin, or similar is welcome.
Building in the Age of AI
Use AI tools and coding agents throughout the development lifecycle to move faster on exploration, scaffolding, refactors, tests, documentation, and research.
Spend your judgment where it counts: architecture, product decisions, data quality, security, reliability, edge cases, and correctness.
Help push the practice forward with better tooling, prompts, guardrails, and workflows that make the whole team more effective.
AI has changed what great engineering looks like, and we’ve leaned in. We are building with an AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AIDLC) first mindset. AI tools and coding agents should accelerate research, design, implementation, testing, documentation, and operational analysis, while human judgment remains accountable for what ships. We’re looking for engineers who use these tools fluently without trusting them blindly.
What you'll do
Own complex initiatives end to end, from understanding the user’s need and business outcome through architecture, delivery, production support, and continuous improvement.
Design and build pragmatic, secure, and scalable solutions across Next.js applications, JavaScript services, Golang services, APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and integrations, data pipelines, and platform integrations.
Use AI tools and coding agents to accelerate delivery, then review, test, secure, and harden everything you ship.
Engage across the full development lifecycle: problem framing, analysis, design, implementation, integration, testing, deployment, observability, debugging, and support.
Lead architecture reviews and code reviews, establish engineering standards, and raise the bar on quality, security, reliability, and maintainability.
Partner directly with product, design, data, security, infrastructure, and business stakeholders to turn ambiguous needs into executable plans.
Identify and reduce technical risk, including fragile integrations, poor data quality, unclear ownership, security gaps, operational blind spots, and unsustainable technical debt.
Mentor engineers, shape the engineering roadmap, and help define how AHEAD builds and operates software.
What does the ideal candidate look like?
8+ years building and operating software systems, with 10+ years preferred and a track record of leading significant work end to end.
Principal-level engineering judgment. You can simplify complex problems, recognize weak solutions, explain tradeoffs clearly, and make decisions that hold up in production.
An AIDLC-first mindset and demonstrated fluency with AI development tools or coding agents, paired with the discipline to inspect, test, secure, and own everything you ship.
Strong experience with modern web and service development, especially Next.js, JavaScript or TypeScript, and Golang.
Strong experience with data engineering and relational systems, including dbt, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, schema design, query performance, migrations, data quality, and data integrity.
Stack-agnostic adaptability. Equivalent experience with Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Elixir, Kotlin, or other modern languages and frameworks is welcome.
A strong foundation in software architecture and the practices that keep systems reliable, including secure development, automated testing, continuous integration, deployment automation, observability, and containerization.
Clear, direct communication. You can express technical intent precisely to engineers, stakeholders, and the AI tools you work with.
The instincts of a technical leader: you influence through credibility, mentor others, raise the level of the people around you, and help teams deliver with accountability.
Why you'll love it here
Join an experienced team that lives on the forefront of technology, where innovation, curiosity, and practical engineering judgment are the norm.
Help define how a modern engineering organization applies AI across the software development lifecycle while maintaining a high bar for security, quality, and reliability.
Influence architecture, engineering standards, and technical strategy beyond a single project or team.
Competitive salary, benefits, and an environment where sustainable, effective work matters.
AHEAD San Francisco, California, USA Office
2000 Crow Canyon Place Suite 250, San Francisco, United States, 94583
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