Principal Engineer
First seen by Alion on Sep 22, 2026.
Principal Engineer
About the Role :
1WRK by ANSR is hiring a Principal Engineer to own the technical direction of critical systems across our platform. This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who thinks in an AI-first way, is comfortable working primarily in Python, and has the depth to make lasting architecture decisions while mentoring the engineers around them to raise the bar for the whole team.
What You'll Do :
- Architecture ownership : Own the architecture and long-term technical roadmap for one or more critical systems, making build-vs-buy and technology bet decisions with clear reasoning.
- AI-first delivery : Push the team toward an AI-first way of building software using AI tools/agents to accelerate the SDLC, and identifying where AI/LLM capabilities belong inside the product itself.
- Hands-on engineering : Stay hands-on - write production code, review designs and pull requests, and set the technical bar through your own work, not just through documents.
- Scalable, cost-aware design : Design software and modules that are highly optimized for scale and cost, and hold the broader engineering team to the same standard.
- Secure by design : Champion secure SDLC practices across the systems you own - threat modeling, secure coding, dependency hygiene, and security reviews as a default, not an afterthought.
- Technical mentorship : Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, run design and code reviews, and grow the team's depth in system design, data structures, and Python engineering.
- Cross-team influence : Act as a trusted technical voice across engineering, product, and leadership - surfacing risks, trade-offs, and options in plain language.
- Standards & best practices : Define and evolve engineering standards for backend design, event-driven systems, database usage, and AWS deployment across teams.
What We're Looking For :
- 10 - 14 years of overall backend/software engineering experience, with a track record of owning architecture for complex, production systems at scale.
- AI-first engineering mindset : You default to using AI tools and agents to accelerate design, coding, testing, and documentation, and you actively look for places to embed AI/LLM capabilities into the systems you build.
- Backend engineering, Python-first : Deep backend engineering skills across any modern stack, with a strong preference and hands-on depth in Python frameworks (e.g., Django, FastAPI, Flask) - willing and able to work primarily in Python.
- Data structures & algorithms : Rock-solid command of data structures and algorithms, and the judgment to pick the right one for a given performance and complexity trade-off.
- System design : Proven ability to design large-scale, distributed systems - service boundaries, data flow, failure modes, and trade-offs between consistency, availability, and latency.
- Secure SDLC : Strong understanding of secure software development lifecycle practices - threat modeling, secure coding standards, dependency and vulnerability scanning, secrets management, and security reviews baked into every stage of delivery.
- Advanced analytical & out-of-the-box thinking : Sharp analytical skills paired with a genuine willingness to challenge conventional approaches and propose creative, non-obvious solutions to hard problems.
- Databases : Fair to strong understanding of relational and NoSQL databases - schema design, indexing, query optimization, and choosing the right store for the job.
- Event-driven systems : Experience designing and operating event-driven architectures - queues, pub/sub, streaming (e.g., SQS/SNS, Kafka, EventBridge) - and reasoning about ordering, idempotency, and failure handling.
- Scale & cost optimization : Ability to design software and modules that are highly optimized for both scale and cost, making deliberate trade-offs rather than defaulting to the most expensive option.
- AWS deployment : Practical, hands-on experience getting software deployed and running reliably on AWS (e.g., EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS/DynamoDB, CloudFormation/Terraform, CI/CD pipelines).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals - clean, testable, well-documented code, and disciplined use of version control and code review.
- A genuine ownership mindset - you see problems through to resolution, in production, not just to a passing test.
- Debugging and observability instincts - comfortable using logs, metrics, and tracing to root-cause issues under pressure.
- Strong written and verbal communication - able to document decisions clearly and explain trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- A learning mindset - you pick up new tools, frameworks, and AI capabilities quickly and share what you learn.
- Collaboration across functions - comfortable working closely with product, design, and other engineering teams.
- Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without necessarily having formal people-management responsibility.
Nice to Have :
- Experience in SaaS, HR-tech, or global workforce/EOR platforms.
- Experience building or integrating LLM-based / agentic features into production systems.
- Exposure to infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/CDK) and platform/DevOps practices.
- Prior experience as a staff/principal engineer, architect, or technical lead.
- Contributions to open-source projects, technical blogs, or internal engineering standards.
What Success Looks Like :
- Systems you've architected scale predictably, stay within cost targets, and hold up under real production load.
- Engineers around you write better-designed, more secure code because of the standards and reviews you set.
- Leadership relies on you as the technical authority for what's possible, at what cost, and with what risk.
Why Join 1WRK by ANSR :
You'll have real ownership of hard technical problems, the room to make lasting architectural decisions, and a direct line to product and business impact.
Skills
System Design, Backend Architecture, Python, Django, Flask, FastAPI, Data Structure, Algorithm