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Principal Software Engineer, Core Experiences (Remote Eligible)

Smartsheet -REMOTE, USA-Engineering - Developers
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Salary
$205K — $275K USD
Job type
Full-time
Work mode
Remote
Experience
Principal · 10+ yrs
Posted
9 Oct 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

Remote in the US or based out of the Bellevue, WA office, this Principal Software Engineer role focuses on core platform experiences and suits an experienced distributed systems engineer looking to architect data movement between transactional stores and lakehouse platforms. Smartsheet is seeking a hands-on technical leader to define technical direction for systems that power sheets, reports, and dashboards used by millions of people and AI agents.

Role Overview

The Principal Software Engineer, Core Experiences position is a full-time hands-on architect role at Smartsheet. The person in this position will identify major technical opportunities, build prototypes, and align engineering organizations across multi-quarter efforts. Reporting to the Senior Director of Engineering, the engineer will tackle projects such as reshaping how sheet data moves between transactional stores and data platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Architect the Sheet Data Platform by owning end-to-end design for data storage, tiering, serving, schema evolution, and asynchronous access patterns.
Design services and APIs that cater to both human real-time collaboration and machine-scale AI agent reads and writes.
Identify technical opportunities and risks early, building prototypes to secure leadership investment.
Lead high-stakes migrations involving petabyte-scale production data with zero customer impact and reliable rollback paths.
Own end-to-end delivery of multi-quarter efforts, scoping phased plans with clear milestones and transparent risk reporting.
Collaborate across Product, Data Platform, AI Platform, and Infrastructure to align on direction and influence unowned roadmaps.
Establish industry best practices, write architecture decisions and RFCs, and lead design reviews.
Define patterns and guardrails for integrating AI capabilities into complex multi-system architectures.
Maintain hands-on coding duties in Java on AWS and Kubernetes, perform deep code reviews, and mentor senior and staff engineers.
Handle production responsibilities including on-call rotation, incident resolution, and bottleneck investigations.

Requirements

10+ years of experience building scalable, highly available, low-latency systems with several years at a Principal or Staff level.
Production-quality coding capability in Java or Kotlin across the stack.
Experience designing and running asynchronous, event-driven systems on AWS or similar cloud infrastructure.
Background owning systems backed by large relational or distributed datastores with successful migration experience.
History of taking high-stakes technical problems from prototype to production across multiple teams.
Experience writing design docs, RFCs, or standards adopted by an engineering organization.
Practical background building LLM-enriched workflows that deliver value to SaaS customers.
Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical industry experience.
Legal eligibility to work in the United States on an ongoing basis.

Nice to Have

Experience with Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Spark), Snowflake, or Apache Iceberg.
Familiarity with streaming platforms such as Kafka or Kinesis.
Background building data access for AI agents like MCP servers or agent-facing APIs.
Experience with real-time collaborative applications.

Skills and Tools

Java
Kotlin
AWS
Kubernetes
Databricks
Delta Lake
Unity Catalog
Spark
Snowflake
Apache Iceberg
Kafka
Kinesis

Salary and Benefits

Base salary range of $205,000 to $275,000 USD with a market competitive incentive opportunity.
Employer-subsidized medical, vision, and dental coverage for full-time employees.
401(k) match program offering 50% matching up to the first 6% of eligible pay.
Monthly stipend for work and productivity support.
Flexible Time Away Program and sick time off.
Company-sponsored life insurance, short-term disability, and long-term disability plans.
12 paid holidays per year.
Up to 24 weeks of parental leave.
Personal paid volunteer day.
Professional development opportunities including Udemy access.
Counseling membership, local retail discounts, and a personal Smartsheet account.

About the Company

Smartsheet has empowered teams to manage work and scale solutions for over 20 years. The company currently focuses on uniting human teams with AI agents by automating manual tasks, orchestrating agent work, and uncovering insights at scale.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply on the official Smartsheet careers page.

Skills and tech stack

JavaKotlinAWSKubernetesDatabricksDelta LakeUnity CatalogSparkSnowflakeApache IcebergKafkaKinesisLLMLLMsDistributed Systems

Questions candidates ask

Where is this job located?

This role is remote-eligible from anywhere in the US where Smartsheet is a registered employer, or employees can work out of the Bellevue, WA office.

What is the salary range for this position?

The US base salary range is $205,000 to $275,000 USD, plus a market-competitive incentive opportunity.

What level of experience is required?

Candidates must have 10+ years of experience building scalable, highly available, low-latency systems, including several years operating at a Principal or Staff level.

Is visa sponsorship available?

The posting specifies that candidates must be legally eligible to work in the U.S. on an ongoing basis; visa sponsorship is not explicitly stated.

What programming languages are used in this role?

Engineers in this role write production-quality Java or Kotlin code.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Smartsheet careers page.

Apply on company site