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Principal Engineer Jobs in Minnesota (NOW HIRING)

THOMSON REUTERS

Principal Engineer

Eagan, MN

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will set the technical direction for the backend, AI orchestration, and identity systems that turn frontier models into reliable, secure, production-grade ...

Thomson Reuters

Principal Engineer

Eagan, MN · On-site

Principal Software Engineer - CoCounsel CoCounsel is our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and agentic AI capabilities to help legal professionals move beyond prompting and ...

Thomson Reuters

Principal Engineer

Eagan, MN · On-site

Principal Engineer CoCounsel is our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and agentic AI capabilities to help legal professionals move beyond prompting and start delegating. As a ...

THOMSON REUTERS

Principal Engineer

Eagan, MN

Principal Engineer CoCounsel is our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and agentic AI capabilities to help legal professionals move beyond prompting and start delegating. As a ...

Abbott

Principal Engineer

Saint Paul, MN

$129K - $258K/yr

Job Title Principal Engineer Working at Abbott At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You'll also have access ...

Abbott

Principal Engineer

Saint Paul, MN · On-site

$129K - $258K/yr

Job Title Principal Engineer Working at Abbott At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You'll also have access ...

Abbott

Principal Engineer

Saint Paul, MN · On-site

$129K - $258K/yr

Job Title Principal Engineer Working at Abbott At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You'll also have access ...

Northrop Grumman Corporation

$89K - $134K/yr

We are currently seeking talented individuals for a Principal Engineer Manufacturing position at the Rocket Center, WV location just outside of Cumberland MD. The Allegany Ballistics Laboratory (ABL ...

W&M Environmental Group

Principal Engineer

Bloomington, MN · Hybrid

$122K - $182K/yr

Principal Consulting Engineer (Civil/Environmental) Technical Expertise, Client Relationships & Complex Project Leadership We're looking for a dynamic, hands-on, Client/Project facing leader who ...

Braun Intertec

Principal Engineer

Bloomington, MN · On-site

$122K - $182K/yr

Principal Consulting Engineer (Civil/Environmental) Technical Expertise, Client Relationships & Complex Project Leadership We're looking for a dynamic, hands-on, Client/Project facing leader who ...

Shipt, Inc.

Principal Engineer

Minneapolis, MN · On-site

We are looking for a Principal Engineer, Full-Stack Marketplace Platform to help define and scale the next generation of Shipt's marketplace architecture. This is a high-impact technical leadership ...

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Showing results 1-20

All JobsPrincipal Engineer JobsPrincipal Engineer Jobs in Minnesota

Principal Engineer information

See Minnesota salary details

$72.5K

$144.2K

$208.1K

How much do principal engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 27, 2026, the average yearly pay for principal engineer in Minnesota is $144,189.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $116,100.00 and $169,400.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What Is a Principal Engineer?

A principal engineer oversees the research, development, and design of engineering projects for a company or organization. These engineering experts are leaders in their industries and need an advanced understanding of their discipline to manage projects and guide team members. As a principal engineer, your job duties include creating budgets, negotiating with vendors, and delegating work. You may also train staff members, set project deadlines, and work to improve engineering application processes.

What is the difference between Principal Engineer vs Senior Engineer?

AspectPrincipal EngineerSenior Engineer
CredentialsTypically requires 8+ years of experience, advanced technical skills, and often leadership or mentorship experienceUsually requires 3-7 years of experience with strong technical skills
Work EnvironmentLeads complex projects, influences technical strategy, collaborates across teamsFocuses on executing technical tasks, supporting project development, and mentoring junior staff
Employer & Industry UsageCommon in large tech companies, engineering firms, and organizations with advanced technical hierarchiesWidely used across industries for experienced technical contributors

The main difference between a Principal Engineer and a Senior Engineer lies in their level of responsibility, experience, and influence. Principal Engineers typically lead complex projects and shape technical strategies, while Senior Engineers focus on executing technical tasks and supporting team efforts. Both roles require strong technical skills, but Principal Engineers often have more leadership and strategic responsibilities.

What engineers make $500,000 a year?

Principal engineers, especially in high-demand industries like technology, aerospace, and finance, can earn $500,000 or more annually with experience, advanced skills, and leadership responsibilities. Compensation often includes base salary, bonuses, stock options, and other incentives, particularly at large tech companies or startups with significant growth potential.

What does a principal engineer do?

A principal engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for designing complex systems, setting technical standards, and guiding engineering teams. They often have deep expertise in their field, use tools like design documentation and code reviews, and may influence product development strategies. Their role combines technical excellence with leadership to ensure project success.

What engineers make $200,000 a year?

Principal engineers, software engineers, and specialized roles such as data engineers or cloud engineers often earn $200,000 or more annually, especially with extensive experience, advanced skills, and certifications. Compensation varies by industry, location, and company size, with senior-level positions typically offering higher salaries. Expertise in programming, system architecture, and leadership can contribute to reaching this salary level.

What are Principal Engineers?

Principal Engineers are highly experienced technical experts who lead engineering teams, provide strategic technical direction, and help solve complex engineering challenges within an organization. They often act as mentors, set technical standards, and collaborate with stakeholders across departments to drive innovation and ensure the success of engineering projects. Principal Engineers typically have many years of industry experience and are recognized for their deep technical knowledge and leadership skills.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Principal Engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Principal Engineer, you need deep technical expertise in your engineering discipline, strong problem-solving abilities, and typically an advanced degree or equivalent experience. Familiarity with complex software development tools, architectural frameworks, and industry certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect or relevant PE licenses is common. Exceptional leadership, communication, and mentorship skills help Principal Engineers guide teams and influence project direction. These competencies are essential for driving innovation, ensuring technical excellence, and delivering large-scale, high-impact solutions.

What engineers make $300,000 a year?

Principal engineers, especially in high-demand industries like software, aerospace, and oil and gas, can earn $300,000 or more annually with experience, advanced skills, and often in senior or leadership roles. Compensation may include base salary, bonuses, and stock options, particularly in large tech companies or specialized engineering fields.

How does a Principal Engineer typically collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive project success?

Principal Engineers play a key role in collaborating with cross-functional teams, such as product management, design, and operations, to ensure technical solutions align with business objectives. They often lead architectural discussions, mentor team members, and facilitate communication between engineering and non-engineering stakeholders. This collaboration helps identify potential challenges early, streamline development processes, and deliver high-quality products. Additionally, Principal Engineers are often involved in setting technical standards and guiding teams through complex problem-solving.
More about Principal Engineer jobs
What are the most commonly searched types of Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota? The most popular types of Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota are:
What are popular job titles related to Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota? For Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota look for? The top searched job categories for Principal Engineer jobs in Minnesota are:
What cities in Minnesota are hiring for Principal Engineer jobs? Cities in Minnesota with the most Principal Engineer job openings:
What are popular job titles related to Principal Engineer jobs in MN? For Principal Engineer jobs in MN, the most frequently searched job titles are:
Principal Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Principal Engineer job openings in Minnesota as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 94% Full Time, 4% Part Time, and 2% Contract. Highlights an 87% Physical, 5% Hybrid, and 8% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $144,189 per year, or $69.3 per hour.
Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer

THOMSON REUTERS

Eagan, MN

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Posted 23 days ago

Thomson Reuters rating

8.9

Company rating: 8.9 out of 10

Based on 19 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

32nd of 487 rated business services

Job description

Principal Software Engineer -CoCounsel
CoCounselis our most advanced AI offering to date - combining generative and agentic AI capabilities to help legal professionals move beyond prompting and start delegating. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will set the technical direction for the backend, AI orchestration, and identity systems that turn frontier models into reliable, secure, production-grade workflows that attorneys, in-house legal departments, and government agencies trust on real client matters every day.

This role sits at the heart of theCoCounselLegal engineering organization, partnering closely with AI/ML engineers, researchers, product, and our identity and platform teams to deliver world-class legal content and AI experiences at scale.

About the role:

In this opportunity as a Principal Engineer, you will:

  • Own identity and trust at the core:Set the direction for how users, agents, and services authenticate and authorize acrossCoCounselLegal - ensuring the right person and the right agent can access the right matter, document, and content, with full auditability.Own the design and evolution of authentication and authorization acrossCoCounselLegal- consideringroles, autonomous agents,etc..Partner with security, platform, and compliance teams on multi-tenancy isolation, data residency, privilege protection, and the audit trails that legal and government customers require.Partner with security, platform, and compliance teams on multi-tenancy isolation, data residency, privilege protection, and the audit trails that legal and government customers require.

  • Small team, big surface area:Join a tight group of senior engineers and researchers shipping quickly, with direct access to product leadership and customers. Think ownership of a startup with the runway of a public company.

  • Technical leadership and cross-functional influence:Lead and/or design initiatives that cut across AI, product, identity, and infrastructure.Mentor staff and senior engineers, raising the bar on AI integration practices, system design, code quality, and security across the org.Be the expert in new model capabilities, collaborating closely with AI/ML engineers, researchers, designers, and PMs to translate industry improvements into reliable, user-facing workflows that legal professionals trust.Help shape the team's roadmap, technical strategy, and engineering culture - from experimentation practices to testing, rollout, and postmortems.

  • Scale, reliability, and performance:Design for high-throughput, low-latency AI workloads: caching, queuing, rate-limiting, model failover, and cost/performance trade-offs.Work with large-scale data: millions of documents, retrieval and search, vector stores, and indexing strategies tailored to legal use cases.Establish and refine SLOs, observability, and incident response for AI systems that must be correct, auditable, and trustworthy in professional legal workflows.

About You:

You are a fit for the position of Principal Software Engineer if your background includes:

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.

  • Hands-on experience with identity and access management - designing or integrating authentication and authorization at scale (SSO, SAML, OIDC, OAuth 2.0, RBAC/ABAC, token/session management, or comparable IAM systems).

  • Deep Python expertise and experience with production systems using frameworks likeFastAPI(or similar), relational databases (PostgreSQL or equivalent), and a major cloud provider (AWS preferred).

  • Strong background in distributed systems: data modeling, API contracts, observability, resilience patterns, and performance tuning under load.

  • Demonstrated experience building with AI - LLMs, agents, and retrieval - and a strong point of view on what "AI-native" software should look like.

  • Proven track record owning large, complex projects end-to-end: architecture, execution, rollout, and long-term operation.

  • Excellent communication skills and the ability to partner with product, design, security, and ML teams in a fast-moving environment.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

  • Deeper identity and security experience: identity providers (e.g., Okta, Auth0, Entra ID/Azure AD, AWS Cognito), multi-tenant isolation, secrets management, zero-trust patterns, and securing how AI agents access sensitive data.

  • Hands-on experience designing and operating agentic systems in production - tool calling, MCP servers, multi-step workflows, and orchestration around third-party and in-house LLMs (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI), including prompt/response management, cost controls, and safety considerations.

  • Experience with AI-adjacent infrastructure: vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, or custom retrieval pipelines.

  • Opinions and experience around automated testing, reliability, and release practices for systems with non-deterministic model behavior.

#LI-ES1

New Position: This position is open due to an existing vacancy to support our evolving business needs.

What's in it For You?

  • Hybrid Work Model: We've adopted a flexible hybrid working environment (2-3 days a week in the office depending on the role) for our office-based roles while delivering a seamless experience that is digitally and physically connected.

  • Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way is a set of supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities, whether caring for family, giving back to the community, or finding time to refresh and reset. This builds upon our flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year, empowering employees to achieve a better work-life balance.

  • Career Development and Growth: By fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development, we prepare our talent to tackle tomorrow's challenges and deliver real-world solutions. Our Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.

  • Industry Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include flexible vacation, two company-wide Mental Health Days off, access to the Headspace app, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, employee incentive programs, and resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.

  • Culture: Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.

  • Social Impact: Make an impact in your community with our Social Impact Institute. We offer employees two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.

  • Making a Real-World Impact:We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, and provide trusted, unbiased information to people all over the world.

Our use of AI within the recruitment process Thomson Reuters utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our global recruitment process. Unless you opt-out, our AI system will assess the information provided by you and compare it to the requirements listed for the role, and present the result to our recruitment personnel for further review. The AI system acts as a supporting tool, but there is always a human making the decision if you will be considered for the role.In the United States, Thomson Reuters offers a comprehensive benefits package to our employees. Our benefit package includes market competitive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs, as well as a competitive 401k plan with company match. In addition, Thomson Reuters offers market leading work life benefits with competitive vacation, sick and safe paid time off, paid holidays (including two company mental health days off), parental leave, sabbatical leave. These benefits meet or exceeds the requirements of paid time off in accordance with any applicable state or municipal laws. Finally, Thomson Reuters offers the following additional benefits: optional hospital, accident and sickness insurance paid 100% by the employee; optional life and AD&D insurance paid 100% by the employee; Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts; fitness reimbursement; access to Employee Assistance Program; Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit paid 100% by employee; access to 529 Plan; commuter benefits; Adoption & Surrogacy Assistance; Tuition Reimbursement; and access to Employee Stock Purchase Plan.Thomson Reuters complies with local laws that require upfront disclosure of the expected pay range for a position. The base compensation range varies across locations. Eligible office location(s) for this role include one or more of the following: New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and/or Irvine, CA; McLean, VA; Washington, DC. The base compensation range for the role in any of those locations is $183,100 USD - $340,000 USD. For any eligible US locations, unless otherwise noted, the base compensation range for this role is $158,900 USD - $295,100 USD. Base pay is positioned within the range based on several factors including an individual's knowledge, skills and experience with consideration given to internal equity. Base pay is one part of a comprehensive Total Reward program which also includes flexible and supportive benefits and other wellbeing programs. This role may also be eligible for an Annual Bonus based on a combination of enterprise and individual performance.

About Us

Thomson Reuters informs the way forward by bringing together the trusted content and technology that people and organizations need to make the right decisions. We serve professionals across legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media. Our products combine highly specialized software and insights to empower professionals with the data, intelligence, and solutions needed to make informed decisions, and to help institutions in their pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency. Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is a world leading provider of trusted journalism and news.

We are powered by the talents of 26,000 employees across more than 70 countries, where everyone has a chance to contribute and grow professionally in flexible work environments. At a time when objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and transparency are under attack, we consider it our duty to pursue them. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.

As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, color, sex/gender, including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, citizen status, veteran status, or any other protected classification under applicable law. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer providing a drug-free workplace.

Thomson Reuters makes reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. If you reside in the United States and require an accommodation in the recruiting process, you may contact our Human Resources Department atHR.Leave-Expert@thomsonreuters.com. Disability accommodations in the recruiting process may include things like a sign language interpreter, making interview rooms accessible, providing assistive technology, or other relevant accommodations. Please note this email is not intended for general recruitment questions and we will promptly respond to inquiries regarding accommodations. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com

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