[Hiring] Principal Engineer @Mirantis

Role Description

As a Sr. Principal Engineer for k0rdent, you will set the technical direction across the entire k0rdent engineering department — spanning core k0rdent, AI Infrastructure, and AI Applications. You are the most senior individual contributor in the organization and the technical counterpart to the engineering leadership team. You will own end-to-end architectural coherence across these three areas, ensuring that the platform they collectively produce is greater than the sum of its parts: a unified, production-grade system for running modern and AI workloads on Kubernetes at enterprise and service provider scale.

This role is deeply technical and deliberately broad. You will:

• Write code, design systems, prototype the hardest problems, and resolve architectural decisions.
• Partner with the Director(s) of Engineering and Engineering Managers to translate product strategy into durable technical execution.
• Be the engineering organization's senior technical voice with customers, partners, and upstream communities.

Qualifications

• Deep Technical Breadth: Expert-level proficiency across Kubernetes internals, distributed systems, AI/ML workload runtimes, and modern observability.
• Systems Architecture: Ability to design large-scale, multi-tenant systems and communicate those designs clearly.
• Technical Strategy: Ability to identify key architectural decisions and sequence them against business reality.
• Influence Without Authority: Proven track record of driving technical direction across multiple teams through collaboration.
• Mentorship: Success in developing senior engineers and raising the technical bar of an organization.
• Communication: Ability to explain complex technical tradeoffs clearly to various stakeholders.
• Business Judgment: Understanding of how engineering decisions translate into cost, revenue, and risk.
• Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Strong judgment in fast-moving domains.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Effective partnership with product management, design, sales engineering, and customer-facing teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field or 10 years related experience.
• At least five years in a technical leadership role preferred.

Benefits

• Work with an established Silicon Valley leader in the cloud infrastructure industry.
• Collaborate with passionate, talented colleagues helping Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers.
• Be part of cutting-edge, open-source innovation.
• Thrive in a high-energy environment valuing openness, collaboration, risk-taking, and continuous growth.
• Professional development and training opportunities.
• Attend conferences and working groups.
• Participate in company outings, happy hours, hackathons, and tech talks.
• Receive a competitive compensation package with a strong benefits plan.