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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Software Engineer - **Company:** THE PHOENIX - **Location:** United States (Remote available) - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Engineering, Code Coverage, Software Quality, Code Review, Continuous Integration, Cursor (Graphical User Interface Elements), Industry Standard Architecture, Systems Development Life Cycle, Software Engineering, Large Language Models - **Published:** August 5, 2026 - **Apply:** https://arc.dev/remote-jobs/j/redirect/p9zpo11bmu ## About the Role * A track record leading software engineering teams specifically (not infrastructure or ops), with strong personal coding roots * Experience building or owning an internal developer platform as a software product: golden paths, self-service tooling, CI/CD treated as a developer experience problem * A way of thinking about developer productivity in terms of cycle time, PR quality, DORA metrics, and test coverage, not uptime, cost optimization, or cloud architecture * Experience driving engineering standards adoption across an organization (coding standards, code review culture, testing practices, architectural guardrails) with the ability to sell it, not just mandate it * Deep, practical command of classical SDLC, from requirements through design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance, and experience building or enforcing those practices in real engineering orgs * Hands-on experience navigating the AI-assisted development shift: deploying LLM-powered IDEs (Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code), building agentic coding workflows, and reasoning carefully about where AI accelerates engineering versus where it introduces risk without discipline * The ability to set standards specific to the AI-assisted era: what a good AI-assisted PR looks like, how to review vibe-coded output, when an LLM-generated prototype is production ready versus a liability, and how to preserve code quality, test coverage, and architectural integrity when a large share of engineers are prompting their way to a first draft * A genuinely considered, defensible point of view on the human+AI engineering workflow, neither cheerleader nor skeptic, but a practitioner who has thought it through and built real systems around it ## Description What makes this role distinct is the mandate to operate across two worlds at once: the classical, human-first software engineering discipline (SDLC rigor, code review culture, testing standards, architectural guardrails) and the emerging AI-assisted development landscape (agentic coding, LLM-powered IDEs, vibe coding, prompt-driven prototyping). The ideal candidate respects both deeply and can build the bridge between them without compromising the fundamentals that make AI-generated code safe to ship. The Role * Short term, this person will set standards hands-on and stay hands-on themselves: defining how the org writes, reviews, tests, and ships code; building or selecting the internal developer platform and tooling; establishing engineering culture and norms; and driving adoption of those standards across teams, in both human-written and AI-assisted contexts. This is not a purely strategic or oversight role early on, they'll be in the code, in the reviews, and in the tooling decisions directly. * Medium-term, the role will evolve into a Head of Software Engineering position with broader organizational ownership as the foundation matures. ## Related Videos - [Are Code Reviews Worth It? Insights from 16 Years of Review Data](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1135-are-code-reviews-worth-it-insights-from-16-years-of-review-data) - [Mutation Testing and Fuzzing in C#](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/703-mutation-testing-and-fuzzing-in-c) - [Let's Talk Quality! - Lilia Gargouri](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1815-let-s-talk-quality-lilia-gargouri) - [AI Won't Fix Your Engineering Culture](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100266-ai-won-t-fix-your-engineering-culture) - [Test-reduction - Doing more with less](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/977-test-reduction-doing-more-with-less) - [Designing high quality software with AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100136-designing-high-quality-software-with-ai) ## Related Articles - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [What is Software Engineering in the Age of AI?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/640-what-is-software-engineering-in-the-age-of-ai) - [What is Agentic Programming and Why Should Developers Care?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/625-what-is-agentic-programming-and-why-should-developers-care) - [Transforming Software Development: The Role of AI and Developer Tools](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/527-transforming-software-development-the-role-of-ai-and-developer-tools) - [How to Become an AI Engineer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/331-how-to-become-an-ai-engineer) - [Never delegate the understanding](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/749-never-delegate-the-understanding)