[Hiring] Principal Software Engineer @Pantheon Systems, Inc

Role Description

Pantheon is seeking a Principal Engineer to join our Internal Platform team — the group responsible for the tools, platforms, and practices that make Pantheon’s own engineers more effective. You’ll shape how engineers across the company write, test, deploy, and operate software: from CI/CD pipelines and internal developer portals to AI-assisted workflows, developer productivity metrics, and self-service tooling.

We’re looking for someone who has built internal developer platforms or developer experience programs at scale — at a software company, developer tools company, or platform engineering team — and who brings AI-native instincts to the work. At Pantheon, AI isn’t a feature we’re adding — it’s how we work. You’ll bring the same rigor to our internal engineering systems that we bring to the platform we sell, and you’ll be a force multiplier across every engineering team.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience, with significant tenure building platform engineering, developer experience, or developer productivity products
• 5+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems and developer tooling
• Demonstrated ability to drive measurable improvements in developer productivity and satisfaction across a large engineering organization
• Experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or similar), and infrastructure-as-code practices
• Proficiency in Go, Python, TypeScript, or equivalent modern languages
• Demonstrated executive presence, with a track record of translating complex technical and data concepts into clear narratives for senior engineering leadership

Requirements

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for Pantheon’s internal developer platform, including self-service tooling, CI/CD infrastructure, and developer enablement programs that reduce friction across the engineering organization.
• Architect, build, and evolve core developer experience systems — including internal developer portals, standardized service templates, observability tooling, and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Define and own Pantheon’s developer productivity metrics strategy — selecting and evolving frameworks (DORA, SPACE) to measure engineering effectiveness, and translating insights into clear recommendations for engineering leadership.
• Partner with engineering teams to identify high-friction areas in the software delivery lifecycle and design iterative, high-impact solutions that measurably improve developer flow and satisfaction.
• Lead adoption of AI-powered developer tooling across the engineering organization — evaluating tools, establishing standards, measuring impact, and driving cultural change toward AI-first workflows.
• Provide technical leadership across the engineering organization — setting direction, reviewing designs, and raising the bar for quality, reliability, and developer experience.
• Mentor and coach engineers at all levels, providing technical guidance and growing engineering talent across the broader organization.
• Contribute to an engineering-wide culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and developer empathy.

Technical Depth

• Deep expertise in internal developer platform (IDP) design and implementation — including self-service infrastructure, service catalogs, golden path templates, and developer portals.
• Experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines and software delivery infrastructure at scale — including build systems, test automation, deployment tooling, and release processes.
• Strong understanding of developer productivity measurement — including DORA metrics, SPACE framework, flow metrics, and the ability to instrument, analyze, and act on engineering effectiveness data.
• Hands-on experience with AI developer tooling (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) — including evaluating adoption, measuring impact on developer workflows, and governing responsible use at scale.
• Proficiency with observability, platform telemetry, and developer experience analytics — integrating signals from Git, CI/CD, incident management, and AI tooling into coherent productivity insights.
• Grounding in SRE and production engineering fundamentals — including SLOs, error budgets, toil reduction, and incident response — and an understanding of how reliability principles inform the design of resilient, operationally sound developer platforms.
• AI-native engineering practices — including fluency with AI coding assistants and a track record of integrating AI tools into engineering workflows, automation, and architectural decision-making.
• Familiarity with agentic and LLM-powered developer tools — including AI code review, PR assistants, automated testing, and developer-facing AI interfaces.

Benefits

• Industry competitive compensation and equity plan
• Flexible time off, sick days, and 13 paid holidays
• Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision
• Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
• In-office workspace (San Francisco & Chicago)
• Monthly allowance for wellness, reading and access to LinkedIn Learning for continued development
• Events and activities both team-based and company wide that inspire, educate and cultivate