Principal Architect (Engineer)

About Engine Engine is the AI-native platform for intelligent travel. For a decade, Engine has built the proprietary technology and supply behind modern business travel, serving over 39,000 customers and nearly 2 million travelers, along with leading travel and AI companies that build on Engine's infrastructure. One system powers business travel, group travel, human agents, and AI agents. That work has earned recognition as one of Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators (2025), TravelTech's Reservation Platform of the Year (2026), and one of Built In's Best Places to Work (2020–2026). We're looking for bold, ambitious people to help redefine how businesses manage and experience travel. Working here, you can expect exponential growth, an ambitious pace, full ownership, and high-caliber colleagues who push you to do the best work of your career. Every hire raises the bar. Come outpace the ordinary and build the future of travel with us. Your Mission As a Principal Engineer at Engine, you will play a key role in shaping the technical direction of our platform as we transition from monolithic applications to a distributed architecture. You’ll work across teams to define service boundaries, ensure system coherence, and guide the evolution of our platform while maintaining scalability, performance, and maintainability. What You'll Do • Define and champion architectural best practices, helping teams design services that are modular, maintainable, and aligned with long-term business needs. • Lead the transition from monoliths to distributed systems, ensuring scalability, resilience, and long-term maintainability. • Shape the technical roadmap, working with engineering leaders to drive key decisions around service design, data flow, and system interactions. • Dive deep into technical challenges, collaborating with engineers to solve complex problems and ensure high-quality implementations. • Mentor and influence engineers, fostering a culture of strong engineering fundamentals, service ownership, and thoughtful system design. • Collaborate across teams to ensure our architecture supports business needs without unnecessary complexity. What You’ll Bring to Engine We’re looking for someone who brings deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and strong influence skills to help us scale our platform. • 12+ years of experience designing and evolving high-scale distributed systems. • Strong architectural leadership—you have driven major technical initiatives across multiple teams and influenced engineering direction at an organizational level. • Expertise in designing modular, loosely coupled systems, with experience breaking down monolithic applications into well-structured services. • Proven ability to guide teams through complex technical challenges, making high-impact decisions in ambiguous environments. • Mastery of cloud environments and services (AWS preferred), including best practices for building reliable, scalable systems. • Experience designing APIs and defining clear service boundaries, ensuring interoperability and maintainability. • Deep understanding of distributed system patterns, including event-driven architectures, data consistency models, and service communication strategies (REST, gRPC, messaging). • Strong problem-solving skills and a pragmatic approach—you know when to apply best practices versus when to adapt to practical constraints. • Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with experience influencing engineering teams and leadership without direct authority. We accept applications for this role on an ongoing basis. We review applications as they are received and encourage interested candidates to apply early. Compensation Our compensation packages are based on several factors, including your experience, expertise, and location. In addition to a competitive base salary, all roles receive equity. Depending on the role, total compensation may also include an annual bonus. Your recruiter will share your complete compensation package as you move through the process. Base Pay Range $205,950—$285,000 USD The Engine Edge: Perks & Compensation We believe in rewarding great work with great benefits: • Compensation: Competitive base pay tied to role and experience, with equity for all employees. Some roles are also eligible for bonuses or commissions. • Benefits: Check out our full list at engine.com/culture • Environments for Success: Different roles have different needs in terms of the environments that drive success which is why we have a hybrid-hub model. Whether you are in one of our amazing offices or fully remote, we'll make sure you have what you need to succeed. Perks and benefits may vary based on employment type, location, and more