Principal/Staff Software Engineer

About the Role

You will work on core enterprise platform systems, focusing on services that ensure Synthesia is secure, reliable, and scalable for our largest customers. You will contribute to our new suite of APIs that will unlock our market-leading Avatar technology to be utilized by external creative tools.

We are an AI-native company and use the most powerful assistant tools on a daily basis to increase our speed of development, automate repetitive tasks, and widen the scope of what the team can work on. This includes Claude and Cursor.

You will have ownership of projects that span months and multiple teams, requiring you to break down complex, ambiguous problems into clear steps that can be delivered and validated iteratively. Engineers within Synthesia are empowered to contribute heavily to product discussions and build with both user and business considerations in mind. Impact is key to everything we do here.

You will work closely with product, security, legal, and infrastructure partners, and will be expected to translate business and regulatory requirements into scalable technical solutions. You will evaluate your work through system health and reliability metrics, leveraging observability and monitoring to ensure systems meet performance, reliability, and compliance expectations. You will consider the long-term direction of the platform, ensuring that the systems we build today can support future scale, enterprise requirements, and evolving regulatory needs.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate scalable, secure, and reliable enterprise platform systems.
• Develop APIs to integrate Synthesia’s Avatar technology with external creative tools.
• Own projects spanning multiple months and teams, breaking down complex problems into actionable steps.
• Collaborate with product, security, legal, and infrastructure teams to align technical solutions with business and regulatory needs.
• Ensure system health through observability, monitoring, and reliability improvements.
• Contribute to product discussions and long-term platform direction.

Requirements

• At least seven (7) years of experience as a software engineer, with experience operating at a senior or staff level.
• Experience building and operating systems at scale, ideally within platform or enterprise-focused teams.
• Strong expertise in development and system design. Experience across the stack is a plus (tech stack: Python, React & AWS).
• Relevant engineering experience for teams building enterprise-grade systems, including areas such as security, compliance, data handling, access control, multi-tenant systems, or platform services.
• Experience owning systems in production, including observability, incident response, and reliability improvements.
• Ability to work across teams and functions, aligning with stakeholders and driving technical initiatives end-to-end.
• Strong alignment with building reliable, scalable systems that support long-term product and business goals.
• Previous experience leading projects or mentoring other engineers is a plus.

Why Join Us

We’re living in the golden age of AI, and the next decade will yield the next iconic companies. We dare to say we have what it takes to become one.

Our Culture

At Synthesia, we’re passionate about building, not talking, planning, or politicking. We strive to hire the smartest, kindest, and most unrelenting people and let them do their best work without distractions. Our work principles serve as our charter for how we make decisions, give feedback, and structure our work to empower everyone to go as fast as possible. Learn more about our principles.

Serving 50,000+ Customers

We’re trusted by leading brands such as Heineken, Zoom, Xerox, McDonald’s, and more. Read stories from happy customers and what 1,200+ people say on G2.

Proprietary AI Technology

Since 2017, we’ve been pioneering advancements in Generative AI. Our AI technology is built in-house by a team of world-class AI researchers and engineers. Learn more about our AI Research Lab.

AI Safety, Ethics, and Security

AI safety, ethics, and security are fundamental to our mission. Our position is clear: People first. Always. Learn more about our commitments to AI Ethics, Safety & Security.

Hiring Process

• Tech Recruiter Interview (30-40min): Technical background, previous experience, and what you're looking for.
• Delivery and Impact Interview (60min): Deep dive into your past projects, impact, and ways of working.
• Technical Rounds:
  • Live Coding Interview (75min): Hands-on problem solving (not Leetcode style); collaboration exercise with one of our engineers. AI-assisted coding welcome.
  • System Design Technical Discussion (60min): Real architectural problems we've faced in production.
• Leadership Retrospective (45min): Examples of collaboration and growth; your future manager or VP of Engineering will outline your role and what's ahead.
• Final debrief on our side, leading to an offer or the end of the process.

The process does not need to take long—we can be done in two weeks. Find more details on what to expect and how to prepare.

Pay

The salary starts at USD 200,000 base + stock option plan.

Schedule

This is a full-time position only—no contractors possible—through our US entity. Everyone at Synthesia gets 25 days of leave + local holidays (no extra paid or unpaid leave possible).

We only sponsor visas if you are already in the US and need support.