Job Application for Principal Software Engineer at Referrals Board

Engine is the modern travel platform for booking and managing work trips. It saves businesses time and money through an intuitive travel network that connects to nearly every hotel, airline, and car rental company in the U.S. It offers single invoice billing, the flexibility to modify trips at any time without sunk costs, and a unified view of all company travel and spend. Customers rely on Engine to not only make travel easier to manage, but to make it enjoyable for everyone involved. The company is backed by Telescope Partners, Blackstone, Elefund and Permira. Learn more at www.engine.com.

Your Mission:

As a Principal Engineer at Engine, you will play a key role in shaping the technical direction of our platform as we transition from monolithic applications to a distributed architecture. You’ll work across teams to define service boundaries, ensure system coherence, and guide the evolution of our platform while maintaining scalability, performance, and maintainability.

You will:

Define and champion architectural best practices, helping teams design services that are modular, maintainable, and aligned with long-term business needs.
Lead the transition from monoliths to distributed systems, ensuring scalability, resilience, and long-term maintainability.
Shape the technical roadmap, working with engineering leaders to drive key decisions around service design, data flow, and system interactions.
Dive deep into technical challenges, collaborating with engineers to solve complex problems and ensure high-quality implementations.
Mentor and influence engineers, fostering a culture of strong engineering fundamentals, service ownership, and thoughtful system design.
Collaborate across teams to ensure our architecture supports business needs without unnecessary complexity.

What You’ll Bring to Engine:

We’re looking for someone who brings deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and strong influence skills to help us scale our platform.

12+ years of experience designing and evolving high-scale distributed systems.
Strong architectural leadership—you have driven major technical initiatives across multiple teams and influenced engineering direction at an organizational level.
Expertise in designing modular, loosely coupled systems, with experience breaking down monolithic applications into well-structured services.
Proven ability to guide teams through complex technical challenges, making high-impact decisions in ambiguous environments.
Mastery of cloud environments and services (AWS preferred), including best practices for building reliable, scalable systems.
Experience designing APIs and defining clear service boundaries, ensuring interoperability and maintainability.
Deep understanding of distributed system patterns, including event-driven architectures, data consistency models, and service communication strategies (REST, gRPC, messaging).
Strong problem-solving skills and a pragmatic approach—you know when to apply best practices versus when to adapt to practical constraints.
Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with experience influencing engineering teams and leadership without direct authority.

Bonus if you have experience with:

AdTech or analytics platforms

We accept applications for this role on an ongoing basis. We review applications as they are received and encourage interested candidates to apply early.

Compensation
Our compensation packages are based on several factors, including your experience and expertise. In addition to a competitive base salary, total compensation may include equity and/or variable pay (OTE). Your recruiter will share your complete compensation package as you move through the process.

Base Pay Range

$200,000 - $260,000 USD

The Engine Edge: Perks & Compensation
We believe in rewarding great work with great benefits:

Compensation: Competitive base pay tied to role and experience, with opportunities for bonuses, commissions, and equity.
Benefits: Check out our full list at engine.com/culture.
Environments for Success: Different roles have different needs in terms of the environments that drive success which is why we have a hybrid-hub model. Whether you are in one of our amazing offices or fully remote, we’ll make sure you have what you need to succeed.

Perks and benefits may vary based on employment type, location, and more.

Ready to Build the Future of Work Travel?
Join us on our mission to transform how work travel works—for businesses, for travelers, and for the industry. Apply now and let’s make travel simpler, smarter, and more enjoyable—together.

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Principal Software Engineer

What You’ll Bring to Engine:

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