Principal Software Engineer

📋 Description

• • As a Principal Software Engineer at HackerOne, you will be at the forefront of defining and driving the architectural vision for our cutting-edge platform. This pivotal role is instrumental in shaping the future of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), a critical domain in today's rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape.
• • You will be responsible for identifying and charting the course towards our target architecture, ensuring that the HackerOne Platform remains robust, scalable, secure, and capable of supporting the ingenuity of our global community of security researchers and the thousands of organizations that depend on us.
• • This position demands a strategic thinker who can lead cross-team technical initiatives, ensuring our systems are not only performant and reliable but also architected for the future, particularly in the context of AI-driven offensive security.
• • Collaboration is key; you will work closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Engineering leadership to translate complex business strategies into cohesive, sustainable, and forward-looking system architectures.
• • Your contributions will have a profound and lasting impact on HackerOne's ability to innovate rapidly, deliver services with unwavering reliability, and maintain the high level of trust that our enterprise clients place in us.
• • HackerOne embraces a Flexible Work approach, offering the autonomy to excel while fostering the connections that strengthen our team. This role is remote, targeting candidates within approximately 50 miles of Boston, Washington DC, or Austin, enabling occasional in-person collaboration to enrich our culture while preserving the benefits of remote work.
• • A core responsibility will be to define and continuously evolve the architectural vision for HackerOne’s platform and its core systems, with a relentless focus on scalability, reliability, and optimal performance.
• • You will actively partner with Product, Platform, and Security teams to translate long-term business objectives and product roadmaps into concrete, actionable architectural strategies that guide development efforts.
• • Close collaboration with other Principal and Distinguished Engineers is expected, ensuring alignment on overarching technical direction, the establishment of robust shared standards, and the continuous refinement of HackerOne’s system design principles.
• • You will spearhead major cross-team initiatives aimed at modernizing our existing architecture, significantly improving system observability, and systematically reducing complexity across our diverse technology stack.
• • A significant aspect of this role involves mentoring and guiding engineering teams, cultivating a strong culture of technical excellence, promoting knowledge sharing, and championing a mindset of continuous improvement throughout the engineering organization.
• • You will be tasked with evaluating and strategically integrating emerging technologies, with a particular emphasis on AI, Generative AI (GenAI), and Large Language Model (LLM)-driven architectures, to substantially enhance the intelligence and overall effectiveness of our platform.
• • Driving architectural governance and maintaining comprehensive documentation will be crucial for ensuring long-term maintainability, transparency in decision-making processes, and clear communication of architectural choices.
• • Effectively communicating architectural direction to a wide range of stakeholders, encompassing both technical and non-technical audiences, will be essential for building alignment through clarity, compelling evidence, and persuasive reasoning.
• • Within your initial 30-60-90 day period, you will transition from a deep immersion in understanding our current systems and architecture to identifying strategic opportunities for enhancement, and finally to actively leading architectural initiatives that yield significant impact across multiple teams and the company as a whole.
• • Success in this role will be deeply intertwined with embodying HackerOne’s core values: Win Together, Default to Disclosure, and Customer Obsession. This means collaborating openly, building trust across diverse teams, and designing systems that empower both our customers and our vibrant community of researchers.