About The Role

Come help us build the next-generation platform that will power Highspot’s vision for conversational intelligence, a robust Ecosystem platform, and agentic workflows—where software doesn’t merely respond to users but actively collaborates with them to drive business outcomes.
As a Principal Software Engineer, Backend, you’ll play a pivotal role in architecting and shaping the technical foundations that enable a new wave of capabilities: AI agents that generate content, automate decisions, extract insights from conversations, summarize activities, and deliver actionable intelligence—all rooted in customer-specific context and rigorous permissioning models.
You’ll partner closely across engineering, product, and machine learning teams to ensure our platform can support adaptive, secure, and scalable AI-driven experiences. While expertise in every technology we use isn’t required, our stack includes Ruby, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, React, Next.js, Solr, AWS, Docker, Kafka, and Kubernetes.

What You'll Do

• Design scalable, secure architectures spanning multiple teams and systems, while remaining hands-on.
• Drive high standards through code reviews, performance tuning, and continuous delivery.
• Improve operational processes, monitoring, and observability to ensure a stable and reliable platform.
• Contribute to defining and evolving the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for the platform.
• Work closely with product, engineering, ML, and QA teams to deliver solutions.
• Research new technologies and recommend adoption where it adds value.
• Maintain clear architectural and technical documentation.
• Foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and high-quality engineering across the organization.

Your Background

• Bachelor or Master degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 12 + years of experience in Ruby/Java/Python/Any programming language development with a strong understanding of object-oriented programming principles and design patterns.
• Proven experience as a software architect designing and implementing enterprise-scale Ruby/Java/Python/Any programming language applications.
• Strong knowledge of database technologies such as SQL, NoSQL databases (e.g., Postgres, MongoDB etc.) and Message queue ( RabbitMQ, Kafka).
• Extensive experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Proficiency in microservices architecture, containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), and serverless computing.
• Strong knowledge of cloud-native development practices, including infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Experience with Agile software development methodologies and familiarity with tools such as Jira, Confluence, or similar for Agile project management.
• Willing to work in a startup-like environment - fast paced, challenging.

Base salary range: $180,870 - $272,174Employees may also be eligible for bonuses, stock options, and other forms of compensation.
The above represents total expected compensation for this role. Actual compensation will depend on various job-related factors, including, but not limited to, location, experience, and job qualifications.
Highspot also offers the following employee benefits for this position:-Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life benefits-Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution-401(k) Matching with immediate vesting on employer match-Flexible PTO-8 paid holidays and 5 paid days for Annual Holiday Week-Quarterly Recharge Fridays (paid days off for mental health recharge)-18 weeks paid parental leave-Access to Coaches and Therapists through Modern Health-2 volunteer days per year-Commuting benefits 

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