Principal Architect (Engineer)

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><h3><strong>About Engine<br></strong></h3> <p>At Engine, we’re transforming business travel into something personalized, rewarding, and simple. For too long, managing travel and spend has been overwhelming and fragmented — we’re here to change that. We believe the future of travel should be seamless and powered by technology that delights customers at every step. That’s why we’re building a platform that brings together corporate travel, a powerful charge card, and modern spend management in one place.</p> <p>To make this vision real, we’re looking for exceptional, mission-driven people to help redefine how businesses manage and experience travel.</p> <p>More than 30,000 companies already rely on Engine to support over 1 million travelers and billions in annual bookings each year. Cash flow positive with rapid growth, we pair exclusive Engine-only rates, industry-leading rewards, and intelligent automation to help businesses save money while delivering world-class personalization and convenience.</p> <p>Backed by Telescope Partners, Blackstone, and Permira, Engine has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing travel and fintech platforms in North America, with honors including the Deloitte Fast 500 and Built In’s Best Places to Work.</p></div><h3><strong>Your Mission</strong></h3> <p>As a <strong>Principal Engineer</strong> 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 <strong>define service boundaries, ensure system coherence, and guide the evolution of our platform</strong> while maintaining scalability, performance, and maintainability.</p> <h3><strong>What You'll Do</strong></h3> <ul> <li><strong>Define and champion</strong> architectural best practices, helping teams design services that are modular, maintainable, and aligned with long-term business needs.</li> <li><strong>Lead the transition from monoliths to distributed systems</strong>, ensuring scalability, resilience, and long-term maintainability.</li> <li><strong>Shape the technical roadmap</strong>, working with engineering leaders to drive key decisions around service design, data flow, and system interactions.</li> <li><strong>Dive deep into technical challenges</strong>, collaborating with engineers to solve complex problems and ensure high-quality implementations.</li> <li><strong>Mentor and influence engineers</strong>, fostering a culture of strong engineering fundamentals, service ownership, and thoughtful system design.</li> <li><strong>Collaborate across teams</strong> to ensure our architecture supports business needs without unnecessary complexity.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>What You’ll Bring to Engine</strong></h3> <p>We’re looking for someone who brings <strong>deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and strong influence skills</strong> to help us scale our platform.</p> <ul> <li><strong>12+ years of experience</strong> designing and evolving high-scale distributed systems.</li> <li><strong>Strong architectural leadership</strong>—you have driven major technical initiatives across multiple teams and influenced engineering direction at an organizational level.</li> <li><strong>Expertise in designing modular, loosely coupled systems</strong>, with experience breaking down monolithic applications into well-structured services.</li> <li><strong>Proven ability to guide teams through complex technical challenges</strong>, making high-impact decisions in ambiguous environments.</li> <li><strong>Mastery of cloud environments and services</strong> (AWS preferred), including best practices for building reliable, scalable systems.</li> <li><strong>Experience designing APIs and defining clear service boundaries</strong>, ensuring interoperability and maintainability.</li> <li><strong>Deep understanding of distributed system patterns</strong>, including event-driven architectures, data consistency models, and service communication strategies (REST, gRPC, messaging).</li> <li><strong>Strong problem-solving skills and a pragmatic approach</strong>—you know when to apply best practices versus when to adapt to practical constraints.</li> <li><strong>Excellent collaboration and communication skills</strong>, with experience influencing engineering teams and leadership without direct authority.</li> </ul> <p><em>We accept applications for this role on an ongoing basis. We review applications as they are received and encourage interested candidates to apply early.</em></p><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p data-start="62" data-end="438"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><strong data-start="62" data-end="78">Compensation<br></strong></span><br data-start="78" data-end="81">Our compensation packages are based on several factors, including your experience, expertise, and location. 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…