{"id":2100004,"url":"https://alion.io/job/dropbox-principal-software-engineer-2","title":"Principal Software Engineer, Product Engineering","company":{"id":4307,"name":"Dropbox","domain":"dropbox.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/dropbox","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":94,"open_postings":8,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.25,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":31,"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":284800,"max":385200,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":385200},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Dropbox","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-10-08T17:21:53Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-12T19:16:28Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-10-12T19:16:28Z","days_open":4,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":4},"description":"Role Description\nAs a Principal Engineer at Dropbox, you will own company critical, loosely defined technical problems with multi year impact, operating at the intersection of technology, product, business strategy, and applied AI. You will define long term technical direction for customer facing experiences used by millions, identifying where AI meaningfully improves customer value and translating evolving business context and industry advances into durable, multi area strategies and roadmaps that shape how Dropbox builds, scales, and innovates, while remaining hands on in software development where it provides the greatest leverage.\nYour influence will span organizations, setting foundational architecture, driving execution standards, and aligning senior technical and product leaders across boundaries. You will lead the responsible introduction and adoption of AI across product capabilities and engineering workflows, bring clarity to the most complex decisions, institutionalize engineering excellence, and contribute directly through critical design, prototyping, and code reviews.\nIn return, you will operate as a trusted technical partner to senior leadership, shape systems and platforms including AI powered foundations that define Dropbox’s future, and act as a company level technical strategist, advancing Dropbox’s mission to create a more enlightened way of working.\nResponsibilities\nOwn and drive technical outcomes across multiple teams and organizations, delivering company critical customer and business impact at scale.\nDefine long term technical strategy and partner with senior Product and Engineering leaders as the technical owner for the most important company objectives.\nTackle the most ambiguous and far reaching technical and product problems, shaping what the company builds as much as how it builds it.\nRemain deeply hands on in software development, owning and implementing the most critical, complex, and foundational parts of the system where leverage is highest.\nInfluence and align roadmaps across organizations, resolving structural bottlenecks and changing how Dropbox builds and operates.\nArchitect and evolve foundational systems(thismay involve both frontend and backend systems) and platforms that enable new product capabilities and operate reliably at the scale of hundreds of millions of users.\nModel exceptional technical judgment and execution rigor, setting and sustaining high engineering standards across a distributed, virtual environment\nDrive AI adoption both to increase productivity and to produce AI based features.\nRequirements\nAdvanced degree in Computer Science or a related technical field involving substantial software development, or equivalent industry experience demonstrating deep technical mastery.\n15+years of experience designing, building, and evolving large scale software systems with sustained impact across multiple teams or organizations.\nDemonstrated success operating at a Principal level, owning company critical technical problems and influencing long term technical direction.\nStrong experience building consumer facing products at scale, with a deep understanding of user experience, performance, reliability, and operational excellence.\nBroad and deep technical expertise across multiple domains, including several of frontend, mobile, search, databases, storage systems, concurrency, and distributed systems.\nPractical experience applying modern ML, LLM based APIs, and agentic frameworks in production systems, with sound judgment around quality, cost, and risk.\nAbility to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and persuasively to senior engineering, product, and executive audiences.\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience defining and scaling company wide platforms or architectural standards that are adopted across multiple organizations.\nProven track record of leading the introduction of new technologies such as AI or ML into core products or engineering workflows with durable impact.\nExperience operating in highly distributed, virtual first engineering organizations at global scale.\nDurable Skills\nAI fluency means using these tools to amplifyhuman judgment, not replace it. We believe people with these skills will thrive as work and technologycontinue to evolve:\nAwareness: Understand yourselfand others.\nJudgment: Evaluateinformation and make decisions in complex situations.\nAdaptability: Learn, adjust, and stay effective through change.\nConnection: Communicate, collaborate, and build trust.\nTo learn more about why these skills matter and what the data shows about thriving through change, read this blog post fromour Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser.\nCompensation\nUS Zone 1\n$284,800—$385,200 USD\nUS Zone 2\n$256,300—$346,700 USD\nUS Zone 3\n$227,800—$308,200 USD","description_format":"text","description_chars":4789,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Consumer Electronics","Digital Storage","Cloud Storage & File Sharing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-08T18:01:39Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-10-12T19:16:28Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":null,"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":385200,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/dropbox-principal-software-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/dropbox-principal-software-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-12T20:03:42Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":32450,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-13T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4307},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4307"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fdropbox-principal-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fdropbox-principal-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fdropbox-principal-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/dropbox-principal-software-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdropbox-principal-software-engineer-2"}]}