Principal Engineer, Product Engineering

1Password4 days ago

Location

Remote (United States | Canada)

Workplace

Remote

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 228,000 – 369,000

Level

Principal

Role

Principal Engineer

Posted

Jun 29, 2026

Full TimeRemotePrincipal

The role

Summary

Principal Engineer at 1Password is a senior individual contributor role responsible for defining technical direction and architecture across core product experiences serving 180,000+ businesses. The role demands expertise in distributed systems design, microservices architectures, and enterprise-scale product development, with a specific focus on integrating AI capabilities into security-conscious applications while balancing product velocity with engineering durability, operational resilience, and cross-platform consistency.

What you'll do

Define Organization-Level Technical Architecture: Drive architectural vision and technical direction across the entire Product Engineering organization, spanning client applications, distributed services, data platforms, and shared infrastructure to ensure scalability, maintainability, and operational excellence across all product systems.

Establish Engineering Standards and Patterns: Create reusable architectural patterns, engineering standards, and technical guidelines that enable Product Engineering teams to build consistent, scalable, and maintainable systems while reducing duplication and operational overhead across the organization.

Lead AI Integration Strategy: Guide the integration of AI and machine learning capabilities into customer-facing product experiences, establishing evaluation frameworks, rollout safety protocols, telemetry standards, fallback behavior guidelines, auditability requirements, and operational controls for AI-enabled systems.

Drive Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner closely with Product, Design, Security, Privacy, Infrastructure, and Data teams to ensure technical decisions support both immediate customer outcomes and long-term operational durability, resolving conflicts between teams with different priorities and constraints.

Shape Distributed Systems Architecture: Influence and drive key architectural decisions around distributed systems design, event-driven architectures, synchronization models, scalability, performance, reliability, extensibility, and platform interoperability to support enterprise-scale product operations.

Establish Shared Platform Capabilities: Design and implement shared platform infrastructure and patterns that enable consistent product feature development across clients, services, APIs, and AI-assisted workflows, reducing technical friction and improving developer ergonomics.

Raise Production Excellence Standards: Elevate the operational bar for production systems through stronger reliability practices, comprehensive observability standards, incident readiness protocols, performance analysis frameworks, and engineering discipline across all Product Engineering teams.

Mentor and Influence Technical Leaders: Mentor and influence engineers across the organization through technical leadership, architecture reviews, design guidance, and hands-on problem solving, raising the engineering bar and fostering a culture of technical excellence and operational discipline.

Navigate Complex Technical Tradeoffs: Help teams navigate difficult technical decisions and tradeoffs, particularly balancing product velocity with engineering durability, security and privacy requirements with performance, and immediate delivery needs with long-term platform sustainability.

Drive Long-Term Technical Strategy: Develop and execute long-term technical strategy across critical product areas, making pragmatic architectural investments that improve engineering velocity without creating organizational drag or platform fragmentation.

What we look for

Technical

Distributed Systems Design and OperationsDemonstrated experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems where reliability, scalability, maintainability, and operational excellence are critical requirements in production environments.

Microservices and Event-Driven ArchitectureProven expertise building or scaling microservices architectures and event-driven systems in production, with strong understanding of distributed systems constraints, synchronization models, and platform boundaries.

Multi-Platform Product SystemsExperience building customer-facing product systems spanning multiple client applications (web, mobile, desktop), distributed backend services, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms with cross-platform consistency requirements.

Security and Privacy-First ArchitectureStrong instincts and demonstrated experience designing systems with privacy and security as foundational requirements, including handling of telemetry, user data, permissions models, auditability, and trust-sensitive system design patterns.

AI and ML Integration in ProductionPractical experience integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into production applications, understanding engineering tradeoffs involved in introducing AI into customer-facing systems, and designing for observability and safety in AI-enabled workflows.

Systems Thinking and ArchitectureStrong systems-thinking instincts with ability to reason effectively about platform boundaries, distributed systems constraints, developer ergonomics, technical debt, and long-term technical sustainability implications of architectural decisions.

Cross-Team Technical LeadershipDeep experience driving architecture and technical direction across multiple teams, product domains, or organizational units, with demonstrated ability to influence decisions and drive alignment across groups with different incentives and technical perspectives.

Education

Computer Science or Related FieldBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred; equivalent professional experience and demonstrated mastery of computer science fundamentals can substitute.

Experience

Senior-Level Engineering Leadership8+ years of software engineering experience with significant time spent in senior or staff-level technical leadership roles driving architectural decisions and technical strategy across organizations or large product areas.

Enterprise-Scale System OperationsHands-on experience operating systems serving enterprise customers or large user bases, understanding requirements for reliability, scalability, compliance, and operational excellence in production environments.

Cross-Functional CollaborationTrack record of effectively collaborating with Product, Design, Security, Infrastructure, and other technical teams, communicating complex technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders and executives.

Technical Decision Making Under AmbiguityDemonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments, making durable technical decisions before all variables are known, and guiding organizations through complex technical decisions.

Skills

Required skills

Distributed Systems DesignStrong expertise in designing and building distributed systems architectures, understanding consensus algorithms, eventual consistency, fault tolerance, and scalability patterns.

Cloud Infrastructure and DevOpsDeep proficiency with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code, and DevOps practices for production environments.

Backend Systems ArchitectureExpert-level understanding of backend systems design, including service architecture, API design, databases, caching strategies, message queues, and system scalability patterns.

Production Operations and ObservabilityComprehensive experience with production operations, including monitoring, logging, observability platforms, incident response, performance analysis, and reliability engineering practices.

Security and Privacy EngineeringDeep understanding of security principles, cryptography concepts, authentication and authorization patterns, data privacy regulations, and secure-by-design architecture principles.

Technical CommunicationAbility to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences including engineers, executives, and cross-functional partners, explaining tradeoffs and strategic decisions in accessible terms.

Nice to have

Identity and Access Management (IAM)Experience in identity, authentication, authorization, secrets management, enterprise security, or trust-oriented product domains, particularly in IAM platforms or unified access management solutions.

Multi-Region and High-Scale Distributed SystemsSpecific experience building large-scale event-driven systems, multi-region distributed architectures, or systems handling hundreds of millions of events or requests in cloud environments.

Cross-Platform Application DevelopmentExperience building cross-platform applications (iOS, Android, web, desktop) or shared platform architectures serving multiple client targets at scale with consistency requirements.

Developer Platform and InfrastructureBackground building developer platforms, internal engineering frameworks, CI/CD systems, or leading large-scale infrastructure modernization initiatives that improve engineering productivity.

LLM and AI IntegrationExperience integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) or AI-assisted workflows into customer-facing SaaS applications, including designing for safety, observability, and user trust.

Endpoint Security and Device PostureExperience with endpoint trust, browser security, browser extension architecture, enterprise administration workflows, device posture systems, or platform-specific security challenges.

Engineering Leadership and MentorshipProven track record mentoring and developing engineering talent, raising engineering standards across organizations through technical leadership, design reviews, and fostering operational excellence culture.