Principal Engineer - Platform, Core Services

The Principal Engineer serves as the Technical Lead for a Core Services Platform engineering pod responsible for designing, building, and evolving shared platform capabilities that enable product teams across Frontline to deliver customer-facing outcomes more efficiently and consistently. Core Services teams create foundational, reusable building blocks that product teams compose into product-specific solutions. These services provide rich, configurable capabilities designed for scalability, extensibility, operational excellence, and ease of adoption across Frontline’s product ecosystem. Examples of Core Services capabilities may include workflow orchestration, forms, notifications, shared application services, integration enablement, and other reusable platform capabilities. This role provides technical leadership, implementation guidance, and architectural stewardship for the pod while remaining actively engaged in hands-on engineering activities including software design, prototyping, implementation, code reviews, troubleshooting, and operational support. The Principal Engineer partners closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Platform Architects, QA Engineers, UX teams, and peer Technical Leads to ensure solutions align with established architectural patterns, engineering standards, platform strategy, and exceptional developer experience expectations. The role participates throughout the product lifecycle including discovery, refinement, implementation, delivery, adoption enablement, and operational support. How You’ll Drive Success Operating Model Expectations Engineering teams within Platform operate within a product-oriented delivery model emphasizing customer outcomes, continuous discovery, shared ownership, and cross-functional collaboration. The Principal Engineer is expected to:

• Participate in product discovery and technical solution shaping activities.
• Collaborate with Product Management to evaluate feasibility, tradeoffs, risks, adoption implications, and delivery approaches.
• Take ownership of technical outcomes, operational sustainability, and platform adoption success.
• Promote continuous improvement across engineering practices, developer experience, delivery processes, and platform capabilities.
• Balance immediate delivery objectives with long-term maintainability, extensibility, scalability, and operational excellence.
• Drive alignment with Frontline architectural standards, engineering patterns, and platform strategy.
• Help ensure platform capabilities are configurable, composable, and easy for downstream teams to adopt.
• Act like an owner by proactively identifying opportunities, risks, and improvements that advance broader organizational goals.

Technical Leadership & Pod Execution

• Serve as the Technical Lead for an engineering pod responsible for shared platform capabilities.
• Provide day-to-day technical leadership, guidance, and mentorship to engineers within the pod.
• Lead technical execution activities including decomposition, implementation strategy, design reviews, and delivery coordination.
• Partner with Engineering Managers to ensure successful sprint execution and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Platform Architects to align solutions with Frontline architectural patterns, standards, and long-term platform strategy.
• Promote engineering craftsmanship with strong emphasis on maintainability, extensibility, scalability, observability, security, and operational excellence.
• Facilitate technical discussions and effectively drive alignment across stakeholders and engineering teams.
• Help establish reusable technical approaches and implementation patterns that improve consistency across platform capabilities.

Product Discovery & Platform Solution Design

• Collaborate closely with Product Managers during discovery activities to refine problems, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and shape reusable platform-oriented solutions.
• Participate in early-stage ideation, technical feasibility analysis, and rapid prototyping.
• Help identify assumptions, dependencies, operational implications, and adoption risks before delivery commitments are made.
• Contribute to defining MVP scope and iterative delivery strategies.
• Ensure solutions are designed with downstream developer experience and adoption simplicity in mind.
• Participate in refinement sessions to ensure requirements are technically sound, testable, extensible, and operationally sustainable.

Core Services Platform Engineering

• Design and implement cloud-native shared services and reusable platform capabilities.
• Develop and maintain APIs, microservices, and asynchronous workflows supporting platform-scale product enablement.
• Build configurable and extensible services that support diverse product team requirements while maintaining platform consistency.
• Contribute to event-driven architectures and distributed systems leveraging Kafka and related messaging technologies.
• Design and optimize data models and persistence strategies using relational and document-oriented approaches where appropriate.
• Contribute to operational readiness including observability, monitoring, resiliency, troubleshooting, and incident response.
• Partner with downstream engineering teams to improve adoption experience and reduce integration friction.
• Support modernization efforts involving legacy systems and progressive platform evolution.

Architecture, Standards & Engineering Excellence

• Lead Design Sketch reviews and contribute solution-level architecture documentation.
• Ensure solutions align with established platform standards, architectural patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Drive adoption of modern CI/CD, automated testing, and operational excellence practices.
• Champion secure-by-default and operable-by-default engineering practices.
• Mentor engineers through design discussions, code reviews, pair programming, and technical coaching.
• Promote reusable platform capabilities and encourage consistency across product teams.
• Help establish engineering practices that improve long-term maintainability and developer productivity.

AI-Assisted & Agentic Engineering Practices

• Effectively leverage modern AI-assisted and agentic development tooling such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and OpenAI Codex to improve engineering productivity and accelerate delivery.
• Apply sound engineering judgment when supervising, validating, and operationalizing AI-generated outputs.
• Help establish practical and responsible AI-assisted engineering workflows that maintain strong standards for maintainability, scalability, reliability, security, and operational integrity.
• Encourage experimentation and continuous improvement in engineering practices while maintaining strong delivery discipline.

Do you have experience in TypeScript?, Do you have a Bachelor’s degree?, * Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field.

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Proven experience leading technical execution for engineering teams or pods.
• Strong experience designing and building distributed cloud-native systems.
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript and modern backend development patterns.
• Experience designing and building APIs, microservices, and distributed systems in a SaaS environment.
• Experience with Node.js and modern server-side frameworks such as NestJS.

• Experience with AWS cloud-native development including services such as:

• EC2
• Lambda
• S3
• SNS/SQS
• Container-based workloads

Experience with:

• Docker
• Relational databases
• Event-driven architectures
• Messaging technologies such as Kafka

Familiarity with modern frontend development concepts including React, TypeScript, and component-based architecture.

Experience operating within Agile/Scrum delivery models.

Strong communication skills with the ability to engage technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and elevate engineering practices across teams. Preferred

• Experience with .NET-based services and modernization strategies.
• Experience building shared platform capabilities consumed across multiple product teams.
• Experience designing configurable and extensible platform services.
• Experience supporting platform adoption and developer enablement initiatives.
• Familiarity with frontend modernization efforts including migration from Angular-based applications.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms.
• Experience collaborating with offshore or geographically distributed engineering teams.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted or agentic development workflows in professional software engineering environments.

What You’ll Need to Thrive

• Acts like an owner by taking accountability for outcomes, platform adoption, quality, and long-term sustainability.
• Strong systems-thinking mindset that balances local optimization with enterprise-wide impact.
• Pragmatic and delivery-oriented while maintaining high engineering standards.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and helping teams create clarity.
• Strong collaborator who values partnership, transparency, and shared success.
• Passionate about developer experience, platform enablement, and reusable engineering solutions.
• Curious, adaptable, and continuously learning.
• A “One Team” mindset grounded in servant leadership and shared accountability.

3.43.4 out of 5 stars United States Remote $160,000 - $185,000 a year, Pulled from the full job description

• Tuition reimbursement
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Health insurance
• 401(k) matching
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

• Dental insurance, At Frontline Education, we’re reimagining what’s possible by becoming an AI-first organization, transforming how we think, work, and serve the educators who shape our schools every day. By using AI in thoughtful, practical ways, we’re creating tools that help educators save time, gain insights, and focus more on what matters most - their students. As part of our team, you’ll be expected and empowered to build and apply AI skillsets that grow with you, because at Frontline Education, technology amplifies what matters most: the human drive to learn, improve, and make a difference. How We Support Growth, Balance, and Well-Being

• Personalized Time Off: Take time when it’s needed most - whether that’s a family vacation, a reset day, or simply time to rest and refocus.
• Paid Sick Time: Separate, dedicated sick leave to care for yourself or loved ones.
• Volunteer Time Off: Paid time to give back and support causes that matter to you.
• Ten Paid Holidays: Enjoy meaningful moments and traditions throughout the year.
• Our Philosophy: We believe time away from work helps you bring your best self to it.

Continuous Learning and Growth

• World-Class Learning Access: Explore thousands of on-demand courses through platforms like LinkedIn Learning.
• Leadership & Technical Skill Building: Develop new capabilities and chart your own professional path.
• AI Empowerment: Use OpenAI tools to build fluency with emerging technology and harness AI as a creative partner for innovation and problem-solving.
• Tuition Reimbursement: Invest in formal education to advance your skills and career.
• Ongoing Learning Culture: Participate in company-led webinars on AI, inclusion, and industry trends-designed to inspire curiosity and continuous improvement.

Health, Happiness, and Purpose

• Wellness Initiatives: Company-sponsored programs that support physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Confidential support for you and your family’s needs.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Health and financial benefits that support your happiness and future.
• A Culture That Cares: At Frontline Education, we want every team member to learn, grow, and thrive-personally, professionally, and purposefully.

Compensation & Benefits The full compensation range for this position is $160,000-$185,000

• Bonus eligibility and long-term incentive opportunities
• 401(k) with company match
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Generous paid time off and tuition reimbursement