Senior Principal Software Engineer – Data & AI Platform

We are seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to serve as a senior technical leader responsible for defining and executing the long‑term technical strategy for backend and AI services that power data applications and production‑grade data platform capabilities. This role will directly influence how we use data and AI to improve customer and project health, and drive long‑term customer value through increased engagement, adoption, and value realization of Procore products and services. You will shape architectural standards, platform evolution, AI enablement, and modern development practices, and play a pivotal role in designing, governing, scaling, and embedding AI capabilities into core products and internal platforms in a secure, reliable, and cost‑effective manner.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical authority for one or more domains, owning architectural direction and long‑term system health across multiple business functions.
• Translate strategic business priorities into scalable backend, data, and AI architectures that support sustained growth and enterprise adoption.
• Define and evolve the architecture of large‑scale data platforms and backend services, including distributed compute, streaming systems, low‑latency query layers, and API surfaces for multiple front‑end experiences.
• Establish durable data modeling standards across operational and analytical domains to ensure consistency, scalability, and long‑term maintainability.
• Lead the design of production‑grade AI systems, including LLM integration, RAG pipelines, vector search, semantic retrieval, and agent‑based orchestration patterns.
• Leverage generative tools and agentic coding systems (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) and agentic workflows to accelerate the software development lifecycle.
• Ensure standards for AI and data governance, observability, performance, security, and cost are built into solutions.
• Deliver cross‑cutting architectural patterns and reference implementations that shape engineering practices beyond a single team.
• Anticipate structural and scaling risks, guiding systems toward the desired future state through deliberate, iterative modernization.
• Partner with product and engineering leaders to convert high‑value opportunities into robust, production systems.
• Act as a hands‑on technical leader, contributing high‑leverage code, mentoring senior engineers, and raising execution and AI‑native engineering standards across the organization.

Requirements

• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including deep expertise in backend system architecture.
• Strong foundation in object‑oriented programming principles and ability to design modular, extensible, and maintainable systems at scale.
• Proven experience building and operating large‑scale data platforms and data‑driven applications, with expertise in distributed compute frameworks and batch/streaming processing systems.
• Deep expertise designing, implementing, and evolving REST and GraphQL APIs at scale, covering schema design, versioning, performance optimization, authorization, backward compatibility, and developer experience.
• Hands‑on experience with distributed data processing and streaming architectures (e.g., Spark or similar, Kafka, low‑latency query engines).
• Demonstrated ability to architect and deliver end‑to‑end production‑grade systems that orchestrate complex, cross‑domain business workflows with strong reliability, observability, and maintainability.
• Practical experience with LLM integration, Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, vector search, agent orchestration, or similar intelligent system patterns.
• Experience operating in cloud‑native environments with modern CI/CD practices.
• Ability to influence architectural direction across multiple domains and navigate organizational boundaries autonomously at a strategic level.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field (required).
• Master’s degree preferred.

Pay

Base Pay Range: $233,360.00 – $320,870.00 USD annually. This role may also be eligible for equity compensation and/or bonus incentive compensation. Compensation is based on the candidate’s job‑related skills, experience, education or training, and location.