Principal Software Engineer, Product Engineering

Responsibilities

• Direct the long-term technical evolution and architectural strategy for the Study Experience, ensuring tight alignment with core product objectives and business initiatives.
• Architect and deploy sophisticated distributed environments designed for high availability, robust security, and cost-efficiency under heavy operational loads.
• Orchestrate engineering efforts across multiple domains by clarifying ambiguous requirements, finalizing technical compromises, and enabling seamless cross-team integration.
• Establish the foundational engineering benchmarks and shared infrastructure patterns—including libraries and frameworks—that optimize developer velocity.
• Manage architectural oversight by facilitating design consultations, documenting RFCs and ADRs, and serving as the final authority on critical technical choices.
• Drive innovation through research and rapid prototyping of emerging capabilities—such as AI/ML and edge computing—and transition successful experiments into production.
• Consult with senior executives and product leadership to translate high-level goals into technical roadmaps while maintaining transparency regarding risks and investment costs.
• Cultivate the growth of Senior and Staff-level engineers, elevating the organization's collective expertise in design philosophy and operational trade-offs.
• Champion operational excellence by implementing SLOs, observability standards, and incident response protocols while optimizing cloud expenditure.

Position Requirements

• Extensive background in distributed systems, encompassing consistency models, fault-tolerant design, and event-driven architectures for high-throughput environments.
• Proven success in delivering large-scale production systems—characterized by multi-region deployments or massive data volumes—that drive business impact.
• Sophisticated understanding of Object-Oriented and functional paradigms, Domain-Driven Design, and the integration of heterogeneous legacy environments.
• Adept at providing technical leadership through influence, aligning diverse stakeholders across engineering, product, and executive teams on complex decisions.
• Demonstrated commitment to mentorship, specifically in scaling the capabilities of senior-level technical talent.
• Superior judgment regarding "build vs. buy" scenarios, the management of technical debt, and balancing immediate needs with long-term investments.
• Exceptional communication skills, with experience authoring architectural RFCs, strategic documentation, and executive-level briefings.
• Results-oriented mindset with a systems-thinking approach and a focus on planning for future scalability.
• Ability to thrive in high-stakes, ambiguous environments by converting vague challenges into structured, actionable workstreams.

Education / Experience

• Advanced degree (B.S., M.S., or Ph.D.) in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent real-world experience.
• At least 12 years of software engineering experience, including a minimum of 5 years at a Staff or Principal level.
• Proven track record of managing the entire lifecycle of business-critical platform systems, from inception to long-term maintenance.
• Experience leading multi-team technical initiatives that deliver measurable value to the organization.
• Ability to communicate technical strategy to executive leadership and a history of developing high-level technical talent.

Required Skills

• Expertise in at least one modern programming language (Python, Java, .NET, TypeScript, or Go), including a deep understanding of runtime internals.
• Comprehensive AWS experience, covering compute (EKS, Lambda), storage (DynamoDB, Aurora), messaging (Kafka, SNS/SQS), and advanced networking/IAM.
• Practical experience managing Docker and Kubernetes in production, specifically regarding multi-tenant isolation and autoscaling strategies.
• Strong proficiency in API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) and asynchronous patterns, with a focus on versioning and backward compatibility.
• Experience with modern frontend architectures, including React or Angular, BFF implementations, and micro-frontend patterns.
• Mastery of CI/CD and release engineering, utilizing deployment techniques like canary releases, feature flags, and comprehensive automated testing.
• Operational expertise in observability, including distributed tracing, SLI/SLO definition, and lead participation in blameless postmortems.
• Deep focus on application and infrastructure security through threat modeling, secure SDLC, and zero-trust architectural patterns.
• History of defining and upholding rigorous engineering standards, code quality benchmarks, and a healthy peer-review culture.
• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK) and GitOps methodologies.

Preferred Skills

• Specialized experience operating large-scale microservices and streaming platforms using Kafka or EventBridge.
• Hands-on experience with diverse data technologies, including relational, NoSQL, and time-series databases, with an understanding of use-case suitability.
• Previous experience shaping platform strategy, including service mesh and internal developer platform initiatives.
• Advanced cloud-native expertise on AWS, specifically around multi-account design and cost modeling.
• Exposure to production-grade AI/ML workflows, including model serving and LLM integration.
• Familiarity with strictly regulated environments, such as HIPAA, GxP, or SOC 2 compliance frameworks.
• Contributions to the technical community through open-source projects, publications, or conference presentations.
• Experience spearheading organizational shifts, such as SRE adoption or large-scale platform modernization.

As with all roles, Medidata sets ranges based on a number of factors including function, level, candidate expertise and experience, and geographic location. Pay ranges for candidates in locations other than New York City, may differ based on the local market data in that region.

The salary range for position that will be physically based in New York/ Metropark area is $184,500-$246,000.

All other locations within the United States is $165,000 $220,000.

Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Medidata provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a commission on the terms of applicable plan documents, and many of Medidata's non-sales positions are eligible for annual bonuses. Medidata believes that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most and provides benefits, including medical, dental, life and disability insurance, 401(k) matching, family leave, flexible paid time off; and 10 paid holidays per year.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

In order to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals, employment decisions at Medidata are based on merit, qualifications and abilities. Medidata is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all employees and qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or medical or common conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, familial status, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, veteran status, military service, application for military service, genetic information, receipt of free medical care, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law. Medidata will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities, in accordance with applicable law.

We will accept applications on an ongoing basis until we fill the position.

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