Principal Software Engineer - Platform

Team: Engineering

Location: Remote (USA)

Commitment: Full-time

Workplace Type: remote

Why This Role Is Important to Arcadia

As our business grows, and as AI is improving, we need fewer, better building blocks: less per-team glue, more self-service capabilities every team builds on, so engineers spend their time on customers instead of plumbing. This is platform engineering at Arcadia. The role could just as well be titled Developer Platform, DevEx, DevProd, or SRE.

Arcadia builds and operates the petabyte-size lakehouse, and the client-facing applications that run on Kubernetes. The role will span both, reporting directly to the engineering VP.

What Success Looks Like

What Youll Be Doing

• Push quality attributes into the platform, especially as AI increases the volume of changes: test and regression gates, progressive delivery and fast rollback, supply-chain and policy checks in the pipeline, and cost thats visible and attributable to the teams.
• Run the platform as a curated internal product: find what slows teams down, pick the few capabilities worth building, publish the roadmap, and measure adoption, delivery speed, stability, and developer satisfaction.
• Build software: self-service APIs, templates, and golden paths for CI/CD, environments, and observability, so teams get what they need without waiting on anyone. You write a meaningful share of the code.
• Carry the cost of migrations: track usage, automate instead of handing out checklists, push through the final 20%, and sunset.
• Manage the platforms stakeholders: say yes with compromises, say no without breaking trust, bring shadow platforms back onto the paved road, and make cost visible to the teams that generate it.
• Set the technical direction and evolve the platform, and coach Senior Engineers through design partnership and review.

What Youll Bring

• Both halves of platform engineering: a software engineers instinct for clean abstractions and APIs, and a systems engineers depth in cloud, Kubernetes, networking, and IaC.
• Reliability youve owned: SLOs, observability, on-call, and incident response.
• Customer empathy: you talk to the engineers you serve, tell a real need from a loud request, and retire what nobody uses.
• Big, long-running projects youve seen through: migrations pushed past the final 20%, platforms sunset on purpose, and the attention to detail both require.
• A clear philosophy on structuring infrastructure and delivery for security, velocity, and reliability, and the stories behind it.
• Current, hands-on production coding, the habit of figuring things out (research, spike, deliver), and relentless pragmatism about whats worth building.
• Drive to reduce toil for everyone through software.
• Ability to initiate and get stuff done org-wide.
• No healthcare background required.

Would Love for You to Have

• Regulated-data experience (HIPAA, PHI, SOC 2 or HITRUST environments).
• A public voice through talks, writing, or open source.
• Experience turning an infrastructure or DevOps team into a product-minded platform team.
• Experience building platform support that scales: support tiers, office hours, docs, and developer advocacy.
• Experience making cloud and CI cost visible and actionable for the teams that generate it.

What Youll Get

The opportunity to own Arcadias platform and to set its direction for years.
Direct influence on how Arcadias engineering org works on daily basis; your tooling, patterns, and standards become examples others build on.
Remote-first across the US, with in-person hubs growing in Boston, DC, and NYC.
A flexible culture with personality and heart, named a Built In 2026 Best Place to Work.
Work that shows up in patients lives.