Principal Software Engineer - Backend

Responsibilities

Provideprincipal-level technical leadershipacross multiple backend and platform teams, shaping architecture and technical strategy beyond a single squad or service

Author and evolvecritical backend systems and APIs, ensuring they meet long-term scalability, reliability, and extensibility goals

Lead design ofdistributed, event-driven systems, addressing consistency, ordering, failure handling, replay, idempotency, rate limiting, and backpressure

Establish and driveservice and API standardsacross domains, including schema design, versioning strategies, backward compatibility, and consumer experience

Act as a technical decision-maker for cross-team initiatives; evaluate tradeoffs and make durable architectural choices aligned with business priorities

Driveoperational excellenceacross systems youinfluence:observability, alerting strategy, incident response, post-incident learning, and systemic remediation

Introduce and reinforceengineering best practicesfor design reviews, code quality, testing, CI/CD, and production readiness across multiple teams

Mentor senior engineers and emerging technicalleaders;raise the bar through influence, example, and coaching rather than direct management

Partner deeply with product, data, and platform leaders to translate ambiguous business problems into clear, actionable technical solutions

Remain hands-on where impact is highest: complex system design, critical implementations, architectural refactors, and high-severity incident resolution

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s orMaster’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant depth in backend and distributed systems

Experience buildingenterprise platform servicesconsumed by many internal and/or external teams.

Python + AWS + API + backend services integration experience

Demonstratedexpertisebuilding and operatingbackend services and APIsin production environments at scale

Strong experience withdistributed systems design, including asynchronous processing, messaging, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance

Deep hands-on experience withAWSand cloud-native architectures (compute, storage, messaging, IAM, observability, scaling patterns)

Proven ownership ofmission-critical systems, including design accountability, operational responsibility, and long-term maintainability

Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, service-level data modeling, API design, automated testing, CI/CD, andinfrastructure ascode

Track recordof influencing architecture and engineering outcomesacross multiple teamswithout formal authority

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity withdata engineering or data platform ecosystems(e.g., streaming pipelines, data warehouses such as Snowflake) as a producer or advanced consumer of data services

Experience withevent streaming and messaging platforms(e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalents)

Background in domains such asmaster data management, identity resolution, data enrichment, or data quality

Experience integrating backend services with analytics, search/indexing, or ML/AI platforms

Prior experienceoperatingin large, complex organizations where systems span multiple teams, regions, and business units

Learn More

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk’s competitive compensation package. For U.S.-based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $139,000 and $249,260. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Belonging

We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/global-belonging

In-Person Onboarding and Identity Verification

This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.

Are you an existing contractor or consultant with Autodesk?

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