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Principal Staff Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

MBR Partners

Staff Engineer

Washington, DC

$150K/yr

BSc in Software Development or equivalent industry experience Previously a Staff or Principal Engineer at a startup company 10+ years of experience in Python development Strong Python Asyncio ...

MBR Partners

Staff Engineer

New York, NY

$150K/yr

BSc in Software Development or equivalent industry experience Previously a Staff or Principal Engineer at a startup company 10+ years of experience in Python development Strong Python Asyncio ...

Knightscope

Principal Engineer

Sunnyvale, CA · On-site

Required Qualifications * 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a systems architecture or principal/staff engineering role. * Proven experience architecting large ...

Knightscope, Inc.

Principal Engineer

Sunnyvale, CA · On-site

Required Qualifications * 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a systems architecture or principal/staff engineering role. * Proven experience architecting large ...

Knightscope, Inc.

Principal Engineer

Sunnyvale, CA · On-site

$180K - $230K/yr

Required Qualifications * 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a systems architecture or principal/staff engineering role. * Proven experience architecting large ...

Vanta

Staff Engineer, Product Engineering

$260K - $306K/yr

Equivalent roles outside Vanta are often titled Staff, Senior Staff, Principal, or Senior Principal Engineer. What you'll do as a Staff Engineer Building New Products at Vanta: * Own the technical ...

Echodyne

Principal DevSecOps Engineer

Kirkland, WA · On-site

Required : • Bachelor's degree in a related field with 10+ years of progressive DevOps/Security experience, including at least 3 years operating autonomously in a Principal, Staff, or Lead ...

New

Carefeed

Staff Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site

... and staff stay informed and connected. Seamlessly integrating with EHRs and HR systems, Carefeed ... Carefeed is seeking a Principal Engineer to join our growing software engineering team. As one of ...

Carefeed

Staff Engineer

Chicago, IL · Hybrid

... and staff stay informed and connected. Seamlessly integrating with EHRs and HR systems, Carefeed ... Carefeed is seeking a Principal Engineer to join our growing software engineering team. As one of ...

Qualcomm

Staff Engineer

San Diego, CA · On-site

Principal Duties and Responsibilities: • Leverages advanced Machine Learning knowledge to extend ... Staffing and recruiting agencies and individuals being represented by an agency are not authorized ...

Typeface

Principal Software Engineer

Palo Alto, CA · Hybrid

$247K - $267K/yr

What You Bring * 10+ years in software engineering, with at least 3+ years in a principal/staff-level IC role. * Proven experience architecting distributed systems, AI/ML platforms, or large-scale ...

Jeppesen ForeFlight

Principal AI Engineer

Required : • Deep software engineering background with experience operating at principal, staff-plus, or equivalent technical leadership levels • Proven experience using AI coding systems in ...

Western Alliance Bank

Staff Engineer I

Dallas, TX · On-site

Staff Engineer I Location: TX - Dallas/Irving What you'll do: As an IT Staff Engineer I, you'll ... Principals) * Proficiency in SQL, Python, and/or PySpark * Working knowledge of data engineering ...

New

Western Alliance Bank

Staff Engineer I

Phoenix, AZ · On-site

Staff Engineer I Location: TX - Dallas/Irving What you'll do: As an IT Staff Engineer I, you'll ... Principals) * Proficiency in SQL, Python, and/or PySpark * Working knowledge of data engineering ...

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How much do principal staff engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 4, 2026, the average yearly pay for principal staff engineer in the United States is $147,220.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $118,500.00 and $173,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

How do Principal Staff Engineers typically influence technical direction and mentor teams within an organization?

Principal Staff Engineers play a pivotal role in shaping the technical vision of a company by driving architectural decisions, establishing best practices, and setting long-term technology strategies. They often mentor and guide other engineers, providing technical leadership through code reviews, design discussions, and knowledge sharing. Collaboration with cross-functional teams, including product managers and engineering leads, is a key part of the role, ensuring that technical solutions align with business goals and are scalable. This position provides opportunities for significant impact, but also comes with the challenge of balancing hands-on work with strategic oversight.

What are Principal Staff Engineers?

Principal Staff Engineers are senior-level engineers who lead technical initiatives, set engineering standards, and provide expert guidance across teams or departments. They are responsible for tackling complex technical challenges, influencing architectural decisions, and mentoring other engineers. Unlike managers, they focus on technical leadership rather than people management, ensuring the organization’s technology strategy aligns with its business goals. Their role often involves collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive innovation and maintain technical excellence.

What engineers make $300,000 a year?

Principal Staff Engineers and senior engineering roles in fields like software, hardware, and systems engineering can earn $300,000 or more annually, especially with extensive experience, advanced skills, and leadership responsibilities. Compensation often includes base salary, bonuses, and stock options, particularly in high-growth tech companies or specialized industries.

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

To thrive as a Principal Staff Engineer, you need deep technical expertise in your engineering domain, a proven track record of leading complex projects, and typically a relevant degree such as a BS or MS in engineering or computer science. Mastery of industry-standard tools, architectures, and platforms (such as AWS, Kubernetes, or advanced programming frameworks) is expected, along with familiarity with methodologies like Agile or DevOps and, in some fields, advanced certifications. Exceptional communication, mentorship, strategic thinking, and collaboration skills distinguish top performers in this leadership role. These skills are critical to driving technical vision, influencing organizational direction, and ensuring the success of large-scale engineering initiatives.

What engineer makes $500,000 a year?

Principal Staff Engineers in technology companies can earn $500,000 or more annually, especially with bonuses, stock options, and extensive experience. Such compensation typically requires advanced technical skills, leadership abilities, and a track record of impactful projects in high-demand industries.

What engineers make $200,000 a year?

Principal Staff Engineers and senior engineering roles in fields such as software, hardware, and systems engineering often have salaries reaching or exceeding $200,000 annually, especially with experience, advanced skills, and in high-demand industries. Compensation can also include bonuses, stock options, and other benefits, depending on the company and location.

What is a principal staff engineer?

A principal staff engineer is a senior technical role responsible for leading complex projects, setting technical direction, and mentoring engineering teams. They typically possess deep expertise in their field, strong problem-solving skills, and often influence company-wide technical strategies. This role may require advanced certifications and extensive industry experience.
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Principal Staff Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Principal Staff Engineer job openings in the United States as of June 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 81% Full Time, and 18% Part Time. Highlights an 93% Physical, 2% Hybrid, and 5% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $147,220 per year, or $70.8 per hour.
MTS - Backend Engineer (Principal/Staff)

MTS - Backend Engineer (Principal/Staff)

Endor Labs

Palo Alto, CA • On-site

Full-time

Posted 19 days ago

Job description

This role is based in Palo Alto, California, and follows a hybrid work model. If you're excited about helping build a large-scale SaaS platform at an early-stage company and the qualifications below align with your background, we'd love to connect!
About Us
Endor Labs is building the Application Security platform for the software development revolution. Modern software is complex and dependency-rich, making it increasingly difficult to pinpoint the risks that truly matter. Endor Labs solves this challenge by building a call graph of your entire software estate-enabling teams to clearly identify, prioritize, and fix critical risks faster.
Trusted by companies that are one or one hundred years old, Endor Labs secures code whether it was written by humans or AI, and whether it's 40-year old C++ code or cutting edge Bazel Monorepos. Endor Labs was founded by serial entrepreneurs Varun Badhwar and Dimitri Stiliadis, and is backed by leading VC firms such as Dell Technology Capital, Lightspeed, and Sierra Ventures.
Sound interesting? Let's talk if you want to be part of the next big leap in security innovation!
The Role
We are looking for a Principal Member of Technical Staff to join our engineering organization as a cross-cutting technical leader. This is a pure individual contributor role with significant architectural influence. You will work across teams to tackle our hardest backend scaling, reliability, and security product challenges.
As a Principal MTS, you will set technical direction, drive architecture evolution, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the organization. You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product, and other senior technologists to translate business and customer needs into scalable, high-performance systems.
This role is ideal for someone who has built and scaled security products before, thrives in a fast-paced startup environment, and has the rare combination of deep backend expertise and strong product instincts.
How You'll Make an Impact
  • Architect and evolve the core backend platform, including microservices, async processing pipelines, and data infrastructure.
  • Drive technical strategy and make high-impact design decisions that affect the entire product and engineering organization.
  • Design and build high-performance, reliable SaaS services that process security data at scale with low latency and high throughput.
  • Lead cross-team technical initiatives, collaborating with and through other senior engineers to ship complex features.
  • Mentor and elevate senior engineers through architecture reviews, design discussions, and hands-on pairing.
  • Partner with product leadership to shape the technical roadmap, balancing customer needs with long-term platform health.
  • Identify and resolve systemic performance bottlenecks, reliability risks, and technical debt across the stack.
  • Contribute directly to code in Go, working within our Kubernetes-based infrastructure backed by MongoDB and Postgres.
What you Bring to the Table
  • 15+ years of software engineering experience with a strong backend focus. You have designed and built distributed systems, microservices architectures, and async workload processing at scale.
  • Security product expertise. You have built or architected application security products before. Deep familiarity with AppSec, DevSecOps, or software supply chain security is strongly preferred.
  • Strong product sense. You understand how to build SaaS products that are performant, reliable, and solve real customer problems. You think beyond the code to the user experience and business impact.
  • Proficiency in Go with production experience in Kubernetes, MongoDB, and/or PostgreSQL. Familiarity with React on the frontend is a plus.
  • Technical leadership at scale. You have set technical direction for engineering organizations, driven architecture decisions, and worked effectively with and through other senior technical leaders.
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills. You can motivate engineers, build consensus on technical approaches, and clearly articulate complex trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Bonus Points
  • Experience as a founding engineer or early-stage startup employee, where you built systems from zero to production.
  • Track record of building and scaling developer-facing products or platforms.
  • Background in startup environments with the scrappiness and ownership mindset that comes with it.
  • Contributions to open-source security tooling or research.
Why Endor Labs
We're building at the intersection of developer productivity and security - one of the fastest-growing spaces in software. Our dev-loved platform has real ROI, strong momentum, and customers who care about doing things right.
At Endor Labs, we think big, start small, and learn fast. We take ownership, move with purpose, and always start with the customer's success. We debate with data, make the complex simple, and challenge each other with kindness and candor. We celebrate wins, learn from misses, and have fun along the way - because when our customers win, we all win.
Endor Labs is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Even if you don't fit every requirement above, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives and experiences, so we encourage all talented individuals to apply-there's no one-size-fits-all here.
Compensation
For candidates who receive an offer for this position, the compensation range is expected to be between $220,000 - $300,000. This may include additional incentives such as commission targets, restricted stock units, and/or bonuses, depending on the role.

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