Principal Software Engineer

Dropbox seeks a Principal Software Engineer to join its team in Austin for a full-time, on-site role. In this position, the engineer tackles ambiguous, company-critical technical…

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Remote from

Austin

Salary

Undisclosed

Department

General

Employment

Full-time

Experience

Not specified

Published2h ago

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About This Role

Dropbox seeks a Principal Software Engineer to join its team in Austin for a full-time, on-site role. In this position, the engineer tackles ambiguous, company-critical technical challenges that impact multiple organizations over several years. The work sits at the intersection of applied artificial intelligence, product development, business strategy, and core technology. This role suits an experienced technical leader who enjoys guiding long-term architectural direction for consumer products used by hundreds…

Job Description

Dropbox seeks a Principal Software Engineer to join its team in Austin for a full-time, on-site role. In this position, the engineer tackles ambiguous, company-critical technical challenges that impact multiple organizations over several years. The work sits at the intersection of applied artificial intelligence, product development, business strategy, and core technology.

This role suits an experienced technical leader who enjoys guiding long-term architectural direction for consumer products used by hundreds of millions of people. While shaping company-wide engineering standards and partnering with executive leadership, the individual remains hands-on with coding, prototyping, and foundational system design where impact is greatest.

Dropbox creates tools designed to establish a more enlightened way of working. The ideal candidate drives both product capabilities and engineering productivity through the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

Responsibilities

Drive technical outcomes and business impact across multiple teams and organizations
Partner with senior product and engineering leaders to establish long-term technical strategy
Solve highly ambiguous and far-reaching technical and product problems
Write code and handle critical design and prototyping for foundational system components
Align organizational roadmaps and eliminate structural bottlenecks
Design and evolve scalable frontend and backend systems supporting massive user bases
Model exceptional technical judgment and uphold high engineering standards across a distributed environment
Incorporate artificial intelligence to enhance internal workflows and deliver product features

Requirements

Hold an advanced degree in Computer Science or a related technical field involving software development, or possess equivalent industry experience
Bring 15 or more years of experience designing, building, and scaling large-scale software systems
Demonstrate prior success operating at a Principal level on critical technical problems
Show strong experience developing consumer-facing products at scale with attention to performance, reliability, and user experience
Possess deep expertise across domains such as frontend, mobile, search, databases, storage, concurrency, and distributed systems
Have practical production experience utilizing modern machine learning, large language model APIs, and agentic frameworks
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executive and engineering audiences

Qualifications

Experience defining and scaling company-wide architectural standards across multiple organizations
Track record of introducing new technologies like artificial intelligence or machine learning into core products or workflows
Experience working within highly distributed, virtual-first engineering organizations at a global scale