Principal Engineering Lead
Seattle, WA (Hybrid)
TalentReach is hiring on behalf of a growing technology company seeking a Principal Engineering Lead to provide technical leadership across its products and platforms while managing and developing a team of engineers.
This is a highly hands-on leadership role for someone who can see the full technical picture, identify risks before they become expensive problems, and connect engineering priorities directly to business outcomes. This person will remain close to the code while serving as a trusted technical partner across Product and the broader organization.
Summary
The Principal Engineering Lead will own technical direction across multiple products and systems while helping the engineering organization scale effectively.
You'll partner closely with Product to shape priorities, lead architecture and technical decision-making, coach and develop engineers, and continuously improve how the team builds and ships software. You'll also serve as a key technical resource across the business, working directly with teams to understand problems firsthand and translate them into scalable technical solutions.
This role is ideal for an engineering leader who doesn't want to operate as a detached architect. You'll go where the problem is, get into the details when necessary, and use both technical judgment and business context to determine the right path forward.
What You'll Do
What You'll Bring
Required Qualifications
Preferred Qualifications
TalentReach is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We celebrate diversity and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.
Seattle, WA (Hybrid)
TalentReach is hiring on behalf of a growing technology company seeking a Principal Engineering Lead to provide technical leadership across its products and platforms while managing and developing a team of engineers.
This is a highly hands-on leadership role for someone who can see the full technical picture, identify risks before they become expensive problems, and connect engineering priorities directly to business outcomes. This person will remain close to the code while serving as a trusted technical partner across Product and the broader organization.
Summary
The Principal Engineering Lead will own technical direction across multiple products and systems while helping the engineering organization scale effectively.
You'll partner closely with Product to shape priorities, lead architecture and technical decision-making, coach and develop engineers, and continuously improve how the team builds and ships software. You'll also serve as a key technical resource across the business, working directly with teams to understand problems firsthand and translate them into scalable technical solutions.
This role is ideal for an engineering leader who doesn't want to operate as a detached architect. You'll go where the problem is, get into the details when necessary, and use both technical judgment and business context to determine the right path forward.
What You'll Do
- Own the technical architecture and direction across multiple products, platforms, and systems
- Identify architectural risks, scalability challenges, and potential system failures before they become significant business issues
- Remain hands-on with the codebase, including reviewing code and writing code when needed to unblock teams, validate an approach, or establish technical standards
- Establish and continuously improve engineering standards across code review, testing, observability, documentation, on-call practices, and incident response
- Maintain strong security and data-handling practices within a regulated environment
- Partner with Product as a peer to shape roadmaps and determine the appropriate balance between new product development, technical debt, architecture, and platform investments
- Connect technical initiatives to measurable business outcomes such as customer conversion, retention, operational efficiency, service delivery, cost, and compliance risk
- Build clear business cases for technical investments and communicate recommendations to senior and executive leadership
- Make difficult prioritization decisions and push back when proposed solutions introduce unnecessary technical or operational risk
- Manage, coach, and develop a distributed engineering team
- Set clear technical direction and expectations while providing direct, actionable feedback
- Improve engineering processes including sprint execution, code review, onboarding, mentoring, incident management, and development workflows
- Use AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity, quality, and speed
- Establish standards for responsible AI-assisted engineering, including appropriate human review, security considerations, data protection, and quality validation
- Evaluate emerging AI development tools based on measurable improvements rather than novelty
- Identify opportunities to apply AI within customer experiences, operational workflows, and engineering processes
- Serve as a primary technical partner to teams throughout the organization
- Work directly with business and operational teams to understand how systems are being used and identify opportunities for improvement
- Translate complex architecture decisions, technical risks, and tradeoffs into clear recommendations for technical and non-technical audiences
- Help modernize systems and architecture while allowing the business to continue shipping and growing
What You'll Bring
Required Qualifications
- Significant experience as a Senior, Staff, or Principal Software Engineer
- Demonstrated experience managing, coaching, and developing software engineers
- Experience owning architecture and technical direction across multiple products, platforms, or interconnected systems
- Strong hands-on software engineering background with the ability and willingness to work directly in the codebase
- Proven ability to identify and manage technical risk in complex production environments
- Experience establishing engineering standards across areas such as testing, code quality, observability, documentation, security, and incident response
- Demonstrated ability to build a business case for technical investments and successfully prioritize engineering work alongside product initiatives
- Strong track record of partnering closely with Product Management on roadmap and prioritization decisions
- Experience translating technical initiatives into measurable business outcomes
- Strong understanding of modern AI-assisted software development practices, including their benefits, risks, and limitations
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executives, operators, and other non-technical stakeholders
- Strong attention to detail and ability to identify issues that others may overlook
- Comfort operating in an environment with ambiguity, evolving priorities, and significant ownership
- Pragmatic engineering mindset with a preference for shipping, measuring, and iterating rather than over-engineering solutions
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Preferred Qualifications
- Proficiency with C#, SQL, TypeScript, and cloud infrastructure
- Experience with Google Cloud Platform or another major cloud environment
- Experience with subscription businesses, direct-to-consumer platforms, billing systems, or high-volume consumer applications
- Experience within healthcare, telehealth, pharmacy, or another highly regulated environment
- Familiarity with HIPAA, protected health information, or similar data privacy and compliance requirements
- Early-stage, startup, or founding engineering experience
- Forward-deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or other experience working directly with business teams or customers to solve technical problems
- Experience inheriting and modernizing rapidly developed systems without disrupting ongoing product delivery
TalentReach is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We celebrate diversity and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.