Principal Software Engineer, Core Experiences (Remote Eligible)

For over 20 years, Smartsheet has empowered teams to manage work seamlessly and scale solutions smarter. Now, in our most ambitious chapter yet, we are uniting human teams with AI agents.

Core Experiences owns the platform and front end behind Smartsheet's most used work surfaces. Underneath them are petabytes of customer work data, one of the largest and most valuable datasets at the company. Meeting the needs of both people and AI agents means rethinking how sheet data is stored, served, and moved between operational systems and a lakehouse platform.

As a Principal Software Engineer on Core Views, you will set the technical direction for systems at the heart of Smartsheet. This is a hands-on architect role.

You Will:

• Architect the Sheet Data Platform: Own the end-to-end design for how sheet data is stored, tiered, and served across transactional databases and the lakehouse platform.
• Design for People and Agents at Scale: Shape the services and APIs that serve sheet data to a real-time collaborative experience and to AI agents.
• See Around Corners: Identify the largest technical opportunities and risks before they become obvious, and build prototypes that prove them out.
• Lead High-Stakes Migrations: Plan and execute changes to petabyte-scale production data with zero customer impact.
• Own Delivery End to End: Scope multi-quarter efforts into phased plans with clear milestones and ship on time.
• Carry Architecture Across Org Boundaries: Partner with Product, Data Platform, AI Platform, and Infrastructure to align on direction.
• Set the Standard: Write architecture decisions, RFCs, and standards other teams build against.
• Lead on AI-Driven Engineering: Define patterns and guardrails for integrating AI capabilities into complex architectures and engineering practices.
• Stay Hands-On: Solve complex problems with simple, high-performing code in Java on AWS and Kubernetes, and mentor senior and staff engineers.
• Own Production at the Deepest Level: Participate in on-call, lead complex incidents to resolution, and drive root-cause work.

You Have:

• 10+ years building highly scalable, highly available, low-latency systems, including several years at Principal or Staff level. You write production-quality Java or Kotlin.
• Asynchronous Distributed Systems: Experience designing and running async, event-driven systems on AWS or comparable cloud infrastructure.
• Large Data in Production: Experience owning systems backed by very large relational or distributed datastores.
• Ambitious Projects, Shipped: Experience taking a high-stakes technical problem from prototype to production across multiple teams.
• Direction Others Adopted: Experience writing design docs, RFCs, or standards that changed how an engineering organization builds.
• LLMs in Real Products: Experience building LLM-enriched workflows that delivered measurable value to SaaS customers.
• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical industry experience.
• Legally eligible to work in the U.S. on an ongoing basis.

Nice to Have:

• Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Spark) or comparable lakehouse experience such as Snowflake or Apache Iceberg.
• Streaming platforms such as Kafka or Kinesis.
• Building data access for AI agents, such as MCP servers or agent-facing APIs.
• Real-time collaborative applications.

Current US Perks & Benefits:

• Employer subsidized medical/vision and dental coverage for full-time employees
• 401k Match (50% of your contribution up to the first 6% of your eligible pay)
• Monthly stipend to support your work and productivity
• Flexible Time Away Program, plus Sick Time Off
• Automatic coverage under Smartsheet-sponsored life insurance, short-term, and long-term disability plans
• 12 paid holidays per year
• Up to 24 weeks of Parental Leave
• Personal paid Volunteer Day
• Professional growth and development, including access to Udemy online courses
• Company Funded Perks, including a counseling membership, local retail discounts, and a personal Smartsheet account
• Teleworking options from any registered location in the U.S. (role specific)

Smartsheet provides a competitive base salary range for roles that may be hired in different geographic areas. This role will be eligible for a market competitive incentive opportunity.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Smartsheet is an Equal Opportunity (EEO) employer committed to fostering an inclusive environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.