Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

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Position Overview

As we transition from a world of files to that of products powered by cloud data services, we're building our core underlying cloud fabric and kernel that is comprised of massively scalable, always-on, globally deployed cloud services that underpin our customer-facing systems. In order to provide a seamless cloud data experience for our customers we're building a platform that bridges existing products and solutions with our cloud data platform.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the DX SDK team. The SDK is the kernel of our data interoperability platform. It is the layer our connectors (Revit, Inventor, Rhino, Civil3D, and more) and partner integrations build on to read, write, cache, and synchronize design data with the cloud. In this role you will set technical direction for the SDK and the connectors that sit on top of it, while staying hands-on in the code.

The successful candidate should have a strong sense of ownership and be able to drive projects through to completion. They should be well versed in building customer-facing products and developer-centric APIs, SDKs, and components that are used by many teams. We are also adopting Spec-Driven Development and using AI tools as part of how we build, and we expect our principal engineers to help lead that shift.

What you'll own

• Be the technical authority for the SDK. Hold deep knowledge of the SDK's architecture, design trade-offs, failure modes, performance characteristics, and the reasoning behind major decisions such as caching strategy, delta apply and revert semantics, data-model API contracts, and large-model memory behaviour. When architectural questions come up in this area, the team should be able to turn to you

• Set and uphold the quality bar. Your code should set the standard, and your reviews should go beyond correctness to design quality, backward compatibility of public SDK contracts, domain fit, and long-term maintainability. As more code is produced through Spec-Driven Development, be clear about where extra care is needed across specs, reviews, tests, and integration validation, so that nothing in your area ships below the bar you set

• Own the most important technical debt and non-functional requirements. Identify the top tech-debt items in the SDK, create a plan, and track progress. Build performance, resiliency, observability, and cost into solutions from the start, and make sure stakeholders understand the business cost of debt so it gets prioritised

• Lead business-critical initiatives end to end. Own outcomes tied to team and division OKRs such as GA milestones, reliability and trusted-trip targets, adoption, and developer experience. Define success metrics, drive toward them, and report progress. Tie each major initiative back to its customer or business impact

• Help the people around you grow. Run design reviews, pair with engineers on hard problems, delegate stretch work and put the right people forward for visible work. At this level your impact is measured as much by the team's output as by your own

Responsibilities

• Engage in technical and architectural discussions and decision making to shape the direction of the SDK and the broader data interoperability platform

• Lead planning, design, development, and testing of key features and capabilities delivered via the SDK, services, and connectors

• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand requirements and use cases, and build towards a cohesive technical strategy

• Build strategic partnerships with key cross-organizational teams (DX Platform, connector teams, product, and architecture) so that the SDK both leverages and informs platform capabilities

• Uphold team standards by championing engineering best practices, and define what good looks like as the team adopts Spec-Driven Development

• Hands-on software development for products that will perform at scale, be supportable, and be extensible

• Write code that is tested, readable, and maintainable, and produce clear specs and design docs

• Perform code reviews, evaluate implementations (whether written by people or with AI assistance), and provide feedback for tool improvements

• Automate processes where possible and create new technologies when needed

• Cross-train and mentor teammates, and share knowledge through design docs, demos, and internal forums

• Communicate early and clearly. Raise risks, dependencies, and blockers before they become surprises, along with a recommended path forward

• Participate in on-call rotation to support production systems

How we build

We are an AI-Native engineering organization, and the DX SDK team is moving toward Spec-Driven Development. We expect a principal engineer to help lead that shift rather than wait for it:

• Use AI tools in your day-to-day work for code generation, review, refactoring, and test writing, and share what works so the rest of the team benefits

• Help define what Spec-Driven Development looks like for SDK and connector work, where it saves time, and where human judgment still needs to stay in the loop, such as architecture, concurrency, and CAD and domain semantics

• Apply extra care as more code is AI-assisted, including stronger specs up front, careful reviews, and integration validation on shared SDK contracts

• Drive at least one concrete improvement to how we build each quarter and measure its impact

Minimum qualifications

• Great team player with about 8 to 12 years of total industry experience

• 8+ years of software development with all-round experience in all aspects of product development (frontend, backend, operations, support, etc.)

• Demonstrated technical leadership, including leading the design of complex features, setting standards, and mentoring other engineers

• Deep understanding of concurrent programming, multi-threading, and optimizing processing of large datasets

• Experience designing, evolving, and maintaining APIs and SDKs used by multiple consumers, with attention to versioning and backward compatibility

• Working knowledge of build automation and CI/CD pipelines

• Comfortable working hands-on with AI-assisted development tools and able to help a team adopt them

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with CAD, 3D and 2D Geometry

• Experience building and developing software for AEC and Manufacturing industries

• Experience leading and delivering community-driven libraries, SDKs, or applications

• Experience building and operating cloud data services at scale (always-on, globally deployed) and the SDKs and clients that consume them

• Experience with Spec-Driven Development or other structured AI-assisted engineering workflows
  

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About Autodesk

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Experience Level

Senior Level