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# US: Principal/Staff Software Engineer

- **Company:** HACKAJOB LTD
- **Location:** United States (Remote available)
- **Salary:** $151,535.0 - $189,418.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Java (Programming Language), JavaScript (Programming Language), Artificial Intelligence, Architectural Patterns, Computer Vision, Automation of Tests, Data Transformation, Programming Tools, Fault Tolerance, R (Programming Language), Python (Programming Language), Recommender Systems, Ruby, Scala (Programming Language), Software Engineering, SQL Databases, Strategies of Testing, TypeScript, Data Ingestion, ReactJS, Large Language Models, Performance Monitor, Machine Learning Operations, Legacy Systems, Golang
- **Published:** May 17, 2026
- **Apply:** https://arc.dev/remote-jobs/j/hackajob-us-principal-staff-software-engineer-opubt681gp

## About the Role

You've shown long-term repeated success on a variety of projects, typically over the course of 10+ years. You are a trusted expert and leader, often called upon to guide ambiguous initiatives and architect scalable solutions. You bring a blend of deep consulting acumen, technical expertise, and product thinking that drives measurable and impactful outcomes. In your previous experience, you have:

 * Demonstrated long-term success on high-stakes consulting engagements across multiple language paradigms, stacks, ecosystems, technical environments, and client industries
 * Built high-quality, maintainable software collaboratively, incrementally, and through an approach tailored towards the unique needs of the clients you've served
 * Led the development and delivery of production-grade software using a variety of languages and frameworks, including but not limited to: Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Ruby, Scala, R, SQL, and Go
 * Evaluated and strategically applied AI-assistive development tools to accelerate delivery and improve quality
 * A track record of understanding, assessing, and embracing new tooling and trends within the software industry
 * Experience building or integrating AI/ML-powered features into products or systems (e.g., recommendation engines, NLP models, computer vision, predictive analytics)
 * Used context-appropriate automated testing to inform software design choices and catch bugs
 * Successfully led modernization efforts to align legacy systems with short and long-term business needs
 * Remedied architecture-level concerns such as scalability, security, reliability, and performance
 * Facilitated alignment and collaboration across technical and non-technical stakeholders to move initiatives forward in the face of ambiguity and complexity while balancing technical considerations with product and user needs
 * Provided mentorship and team support at scale, while sharing knowledge and improving team practices
 * Actively sought out and effectively given feedback
 * Collaboratively led stakeholders to balance technical considerations with product and user needs

## Description

As a go-to technologist and strategist within 8th Light, you'll work with a variety of clients, typically one to two in a year, while continuing to deepen your and our collective domain expertise over the course of your career with us. You'll be responsible for:

 * Rapidly building trust with clients, demonstrating technical expertise and understanding of their domain and objectives
 * Guiding technical direction, solving complex problems, and demonstrating best practices while remaining deeply engaged within the codebase
 * Working pragmatically to balance technology choices while delivering high-quality work within deadlines
 * Advising clients on architecture, scalability and platform evolution, connecting technical decisions to product and business outcomes
 * Collaborating on systems that involve the full ML lifecycle from data ingestion and preprocessing, to model deployment, integration, and performance monitoring
 * Driving innovation by proactively surfacing new technical approaches and product solutions
 * Leading or initiating formal feedback conversations with teams and clients via retrospectives
 * Clearly articulating and documenting outcomes and driving forward action items
 * Contributing to the health of your team and 8th Light's culture by modeling our Values
 * Designing and managing high-level technical roadmaps for large engagements
 * Building your network and maintaining relationships with clients and other industry leaders within your domain
 * Coaching client engineering teams, transferring knowledge and leveling up practices
 * Influencing client CTOs and executive decisions. Planning and execute technical work that involves stakeholders outside of project boundaries such as across a client's technical organization
 * Participating in account planning; opportunity identification.
 * Facilitating retrospectives, strategy sessions, and technical deep-dives to improve team and project outcomes
 * Identifying, mitigating, and resolving blockers to team progress
 * Contributing to 8th Light by serving as a mentor, leading or designing workshops internally or for clients, representing 8th Light in the tech community, or supporting our hiring processes
 * Demonstrating leadership in scalable system design, modular architecture, and platform- or product-oriented development.
 * Bringing depth in testing strategies, observability, fault tolerance, and secure engineering practices.
 * Applying architectural patterns to evaluate tradeoffs and drive clear, documented design rationale.


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