Principal Software Engineer, Business Platform

Who Are We?

Postman is the world’s leading API platform, used by more than 45 million+ developers and 500,000 organizations, including 98% of the Fortune 500. Postman is helping developers and professionals across the globe build the API-first world by simplifying each step of the API lifecycle and streamlining collaboration-enabling users to create better APIs, faster.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Boston, New York, Austin, Tokyo, London, and Bangalore - where Postman was founded. Postman is privately held, with funding from Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Learn more at postman.com or connect with Postman on X via @getpostman.

P.S: We highly recommend reading The "API-First World" graphic novel to understand the bigger picture and our vision at Postman.

What We’re Looking For

As agentic AI becomes the core fabric of how engineering is done worldwide, we want to be the leaders in how agents interact with APIs. This transformation requires solving agentic identity, extending or building new standards and protocols, building agent-to-agent interactions including authorization, licensing, trust delegation, security and monetization. Many of these problems have not yet been solved anywhere in the industry.

We are looking for an exceptional Principal Engineer to define and lead the next generation of our Business Platform for the agentic era. You will own the long-term technical vision and engineering strategy for the Business Platform as a whole, tying together business, product and organizational goals into a coherent architecture that advances the company. You’ll be accountable for the multi-year technical roadmap and architecture across identity, licensing, billing, subscriptions and trust, and for how these systems serve every product at Postman. You’ll work across many teams and functions, set the bar for operating critical tier 0 services, and own company-level outcomes such as availability, security and trust. Beyond Postman, you’ll help shape how the industry approaches agentic identity, authorization and monetization, including contributing to emerging standards and protocols.

The ideal candidate is a recognized thought leader with deep expertise in an area broadly applicable to the industry, such as identity management, security or AI. They navigate a high degree of business, engineering and organizational ambiguity, and turn it into clear direction that teams can execute on. They have an entrepreneurial approach and don’t consider anything beneath them: they are as comfortable writing code, documentation and design reviews as they are writing strategy documents, presenting to executives and giving talks at industry events. They create what others wish they had, whether that is technology, designs or process. They mentor Senior and Staff Engineers and grow the technical leadership of the organization. They communicate with clarity and conviction to audiences ranging from engineers to company executives, board members and industry peers, and they are unafraid to speak truth to power. Finally, they bring best practices from the broader industry to Postman, and bring Postman’s perspective back to the industry.

The ideal candidate is also strongly aligned with our values. We create with the same curiosity we see in our users. We value transparency and honest communication about our successes and failures. We have an inclusive work culture where we value diversity of opinion. We are motivated by delivering the absolute best experience for our users.

What You'll Do

• Technical Vision and Strategy

• Define the long-term technical vision and architecture for the Business Platform, and connect it to Postman’s product architecture and company strategy
• Lead Postman’s approach to agentic identity, authorization, trust delegation, licensing and monetization, and turn it into a well-structured, multi-year engineering roadmap
• Make high-leverage technology choices with clear comparative analysis, and set architectural standards that teams across the company adopt
• Represent Postman in the industry: contribute to standards and protocols, publish, and speak at conferences and with industry peers

• Technical Leadership and Execution

• Guide multiple teams in building highly secure, scalable, reliable and performant systems that serve hundreds of millions of developers and agents
• Review and shape the most critical designs across the organization, identify cross-team dependencies and risks early, and resolve them
• Set the bar for operational excellence for tier 0 services, including observability, scale, performance, security and quality
• Stay hands on: prototype, write code and dig into the hardest problems, leading by example

• Prioritization and Roadmap

• Partner with engineering and product leaders across the company to shape priorities, keeping a sharp focus on the most impactful work
• Bring fragmented ideas from across teams together into a cohesive narrative and roadmap

• Collaboration

• Work with executive leadership to influence company strategy, org design and investment decisions
• Mobilize a diverse group of functions, including product, engineering, data, security, legal and finance, to achieve company-level goals
• Work effectively across teams, cultures, time zones and functions

• Mentorship

• Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers and help them grow
• Build the next generation of technical leadership across the organization

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent industry experience
• Deep expertise and recognized thought leadership in identity management, security or a closely related area, including industry standards (e.g. OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, SSO, FIDO)
• Track record of influencing the industry through standards bodies, open source, publications or talks
• 15+ years of hands-on engineering experience and fluency in common programming languages (e.g. C, C++, Java, Go, Python, JavaScript, NodeJS)
• Experience setting the technical strategy and architecture for large-scale platforms across multiple teams and organizations
• Demonstrated company-level impact, leading initiatives that span engineering, product and non-engineering functions
• Experience building and running highly available, highly scalable tier 0 systems, and the ability to articulate what worked and what didn’t
• Exceptional problem solving, design and analytical skills, with comfort in high business and technical ambiguity
• Ability to communicate a technical vision to audiences ranging from engineers to executives and board members
• Experience with AI and agentic systems is a strong plus
• Bias for action

This role is based in the greater San Francisco area, and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $325,250 to $375,000, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.

What Else?

In addition to Postman's pay-on-performance philosophy, and a flexible schedule working with a fun, collaborative team, Postman offers a comprehensive set of benefits, including full medical coverage, flexible PTO, wellness reimbursement, and a monthly lunch stipend. Along with that, our wellness programs will help you stay in the best of your physical and mental health. Our frequent and fascinating team-building events will keep you connected, while our donation-matching program can support the causes you care about. We’re building a long-term company with an inclusive culture where everyone can be the best version of themselves.

At Postman we value in person collaboration. We are in office 5 days a week for all roles based out of our hubs in San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Austin, New York City, Tokyo and London. For roles based in Bangalore, employees currently work in the office three days a week and will transition to five days per week by the end of the year. We were thoughtful in our approach which is based on collaboration and grounded in feedback from our workforce, leadership team, and peers. The benefits of our in office model will be shared knowledge, brainstorming sessions, communication, and building trust in-person that cannot be replicated via zoom.

Our Values

At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users. We value transparency and honest communication about not only successes, but also failures. In our work, we focus on specific goals that add up to a larger vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued equally as important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can.

Equal Opportunity

Postman is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Postman does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Postman will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Postman.