Principal Software Engineer

About this role

<p><span style="color: #000000;">Job Title: Principal Software Engineer</span></p> <p><span style="color: #000000;">Location: South San Francisco, CA preferred; Remote optional</span></p> <p><span style="color: #000000;">Job Type: Full-time<br></span></p> <h2><span style="color: #000000;">About the Role<br></span></h2> <p><span style="color: #000000;">We're seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join Natera's R&D Platform Infrastructure team. The team builds the cloud infrastructure, workflow platforms, and data platforms that R&D uses to do its science — including a Kubernetes-based workflow execution platform, a custom R&D LIMS system, and a set of supporting tools that routinely handle production-scale workloads.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color: #000000;">This is a senior technical role. You'll own the full architecture, implementation, and delivery of large projects across our platform. You'll partner with the team lead on roadmap and tough technical calls, mentor mid-level engineers, and help the team find the right solution for the problem — not the most elaborate one. We're a small team (4 engineers + lead) with broad scope, and we're heavily AI-augmented: every engineer uses Claude Code / Cursor as a daily tool, and we build our own AI tooling (custom plugins, MCP servers, agents) to multiply ourselves.<br></span></p> <h2><span style="color: #000000;">Responsibilities<br></span></h2> <ul> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Architecture & Delivery: Own the design, implementation, and delivery of major initiatives across our platform. Take fuzzy problems through to shipped, working software used in production.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Technical Leadership: Lead architecture and design reviews. Help the team find the right solution for the problem and avoid unnecessary complexity. Influence technical decisions across the team.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Mentorship: Mentor mid-level engineers through code review, design docs, and pairing. Raise the engineering bar by example.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">AI-Native Development: Build and improve our AI-coding tooling alongside the rest of the team. Help us push the frontier of agent-driven software development inside the company.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Cross-Functional Partnership: Work with bioinformaticians, scientists, and other R&D engineers to understand their needs and translate them into platform capabilities. Partner with the team lead on roadmap, prioritization, and tough technical calls.</span></li> </ul> <h2><span style="color: #000000;"><br>Required Experience<br></span></h2> <ul> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Years of Experience: 10+ years of professional software engineering experience across a range of systems and problem types.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Cloud Infrastructure: Production experience with a major cloud platform (AWS preferred; GCP or Azure equivalent). You've designed <em>for</em> a cloud, not just deployed to one.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Container Orchestration: Production experience with Kubernetes (or equivalent). Comfortable reasoning about cluster design, scheduling, networking, and workload patterns.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Infrastructure as Code: Production experience with Terraform (or equivalent). Comfortable owning shared modules and multi-environment deployments.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Programming: Strong proficiency in at least one general-purpose language (Python, Go, Java, or similar). Comfortable picking up new languages as needed — and comfortable using AI tooling to accelerate that.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">End-User Software: You've shipped software to end users (internal or external). You understand the realities of running a product — incongruent user feedback, competing priorities, the gap between requirements and what users actually need.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Team Leadership: You've led an engineering team before and have mentored junior engineers. You're comfortable being the technical owner of multi-quarter initiatives.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span style="color: #000000;">Startup Background: You've worked in fast-moving environments where results need to be delivered quickly. Scrappy, MVP-first, comfortable shipping in days rather than weeks.</span></li> <li style="color: #000000 !important;"><span…