Principal Engineer

Described as the “Uber of Content,” Social Native is a marketplace technology company providing brands the ability to scale high-quality content creation and optimize their cross-channel digital marketing strategies. By connecting brands & agencies with a diverse network of creators, we provide data-driven insights, streamline content production, and improve performance across social and e-commerce channels. Brands like Unilever, Adidas, L’Oréal, Crocs, and Nestlé trust Social Native to enhance their paid and organic social strategies through user-generated content (UGC), branded content, and content editing solutions, ensuring they have the right creative assets to drive engagement and conversions.

We're looking for a hands-on Principal Engineer who can seamlessly blend technical excellence with strategic leadership. If you have deep coding expertise, proven AI implementation experience, and a product-focused mindset, we want you to help drive Social Native's next chapter of innovation!

Role Overview

As Principal Engineer at Social Native, you'll be the senior technical voice driving innovation across our creator marketing platform. Reporting directly to the GM, you'll provide both technical leadership and hands-on expertise to deliver cutting-edge AI-powered features and new product capabilities. You'll set the technical direction for a distributed engineering team while remaining deeply involved in architecture decisions and critical implementations. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of creator marketing technology while working with modern AI and cloud-native technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive technical strategy and architecture for new product initiatives, with emphasis on AI-powered features and platform capabilities
• Maintain hands-on involvement (40-50% coding) on critical path features, particularly AI/ML implementations and complex system design
• Lead and mentor a distributed engineering team across multiple time zones, establishing technical standards and best practices
• Partner closely with Product Management to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Architect and implement AI solutions for creator matching, content optimization, and campaign intelligence
• Establish engineering excellence through code reviews, testing standards, monitoring, and incident response processes
• Define and track engineering metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR) to ensure team productivity and system reliability
• Design microservices architecture and API strategies that enable rapid product innovation
• Optimize cloud infrastructure for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency
• Champion a product-minded engineering culture where technical decisions are driven by customer and business impact

Qualifications:

• 8 years of hands-on software development experience with recent production coding
• 3 years in technical leadership roles, preferably in fast-paced startup environments
• Deep expertise in modern web technologies (Node.js, React, GraphQL, TypeScript) with ability to review and write production code
• Proven track record implementing AI/ML solutions in production (OpenAI, LangChain, vector databases, RAG patterns)
• Experience with distributed systems, microservices architecture, and event-driven design (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Strong AWS and Kubernetes experience with focus on scalability and observability
• Track record of managing distributed engineering teams across 6 hour time zones
• Product-minded approach with ability to translate technical complexity into business value
• Experience with real-time systems, high-volume data processing, and API design
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for async collaboration
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in creator economy, marketplace platforms, or content management systems
• Background in building B2B SaaS products with enterprise customers
• Familiarity with Meta, TikTok, or other social platform APIs
• Experience with recommendation systems and content ranking algorithms
• Knowledge of modern observability tools (Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus)
• Track record of introducing new technologies that unlock product capabilities
• Experience with rapid prototyping and iterative product development
• Previous startup experience through growth phases\

What success looks like:

• Ship AI-powered features that differentiate our platform in the market
• Establish technical standards that improve team velocity by 30%
• Reduce system incidents while increasing deployment frequency
• Build a culture of innovation where engineers are empowered to propose and lead technical initiatives
• Successfully balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution
• Become the trusted technical advisor to leadership on product feasibility and innovation opportunities

Why this role is unique:

This isn't a pure management role or an ivory tower architect position. You'll be actively coding, reviewing PRs, and debugging production issues while also setting technical strategy and mentoring the team. You'll have the autonomy to make significant technical decisions and the opportunity to build innovative features from the ground up using cutting-edge AI technologies.

Social Native Perks:

One of the best perks of Social Native is working with amazing talented people! Come see what it’s like to work at a fast-paced, venture-backed tech company. We are looking for smart, driven, fun people who are eager to take ownership of exciting projects and be a part of building something great.

• Attractive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage
• Competitive compensation
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Unlimited Vacation Policy