[Hiring] Principal Software Engineer, Workload Orchestration (Distributed Compute) @nTop

Role Description

You'll be the "solver" for our most complex technical challenges. This isn't a narrowly-scoped domain expert role or a focus on quarterly deliverables—you'll architect solutions over 1-3 years that compound in value, define our platform direction, and unlock entirely new capabilities.

What makes this unusual:

• Genuine autonomy to identify the highest-leverage problems across the entire platform.
• Your "domain" is making the system coherent—from customer interfaces to infrastructure to how we build software.
• Enable deep specialists to build increasingly sophisticated features without the system collapsing under complexity.

The Problems You'll Tackle:

• How should our platform expose computational power through abstractions and interfaces?
• Where is complexity creating friction, and how do we eliminate it without sacrificing capability?
• What infrastructure investments will 10x our iteration speed?

These are "define how we think about this for the next several years" problems.

What You'll Accomplish:

• Year 1:
  • Identify and solve 2-3 critical architectural bottlenecks limiting the team today.
  • Drive at least one foundational platform initiative from design through deployment.
  • Establish yourself as the technical escalation point.
• Years 2-3:
  • Define architectural direction for major platform capabilities that will serve us for 3+ years.
  • Lead multi-quarter initiatives that fundamentally change how we build or how customers use our platform.
  • Your impact is measured by what others can now accomplish.

This is compound-interest work, early decisions multiply in value over time.

Qualifications

• 8+ years software engineering with increasing scope and demonstrated impact across multiple teams.
• Deep platform/infrastructure expertise: APIs, abstractions, system architecture, performance at scale.
• Track record of improving software quality and engineering velocity, not just building features.
• Leadership without authority - you build consensus through technical credibility and clarity.
• Experience mentoring engineers and elevating team capabilities.

Requirements

• High-performance computing, scientific computing, or CAD/CAM systems.
• Programming language design or domain-specific languages.
• Working with technically sophisticated customers.

You're Probably NOT a Fit If:

• You prefer deep specialization over broad platform thinking.
• You want clearly defined scope rather than self-directed problem-finding.
• You need significant structure and direction to be productive.

Benefits

• Work on genuinely hard computational problems in geometry and high-performance computing with real impact in aerospace and advanced manufacturing.
• Shape the technical foundation of a platform defining a new category.
• Collaborate with deep specialists while having autonomy to solve problems your way.