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StrongMind · 1 month ago

Principal Engineer (Ruby) - REMOTE

United States

Full-time

Remote

Lead/Staff

StrongMind is an innovative company focused on transforming education through technology. They are seeking a Principal Engineer who will own a core product area and lead multi-team initiatives while ensuring the architectural integrity and delivery of their systems.

E-LearningEdTechSoftware

No H1B

Responsibilities

Own the technical direction, quality, and delivery of a key product area within StrongMind

When needed, lead multi-team, multi-product projects (for example, cross-cutting platform changes, shared services, or high-impact features)

Act as the go-to technical partner for Product Managers in your areas, shaping epics and projects into realistic, incremental slices

Help design and evolve SMC as an online school OS, balancing product needs with platform stability and extensibility

Define and refine service boundaries, module boundaries, data contracts, and integration patterns to keep the cost of future changes low

Sit on the Architecture Committee with the other Principals, helping define and maintain org-wide architectural guidelines and reviewing major proposals for fit and risk

Make decisions that balance short-term delivery with 12–24 month evolution, cutting the right corners without accumulating dangerous debt

Own delivery for your product area and for multi-team initiatives you lead: help scope, slice, sequence, and de-risk

Be the go-to person for PMs when work is big, fuzzy, or risky – turning concepts into incremental, shippable plans

Apply heavy economic thinking: constantly weigh effort versus value, short-term versus long-term, and help choose the path that maximizes business impact

Help set expectations with leadership and other departments (for example, 'this will slip unless we drop X,' 'we should reduce scope here to meet the date,' or 'if we invest in this platform piece, shipping features will get cheaper')

Spend meaningful time in the Ruby/Rails codebase, especially on critical paths, refactors and migrations, integrations, and performance work

Model good practices in testing, observability, secure coding, and incremental delivery

Use AI tools to accelerate yourself and others, but keep human judgment and system thinking in the driver’s seat

Qualification

Ruby on RailsSystems DesignAPI DesignCloud ServicesFull-Stack DevelopmentRelational DatabasesDevOps BasicsCommunication SkillsMentoringCollaboration

Required

Expert professional software engineering experience

You built real products at scale with Ruby on Rails

Mastery-level Ruby/Rails, including deep understanding of Rails internals and ecosystem, ActiveRecord, background jobs, caching, performance tuning, and secure coding practices

Strong full-stack skills, including HTML/CSS/JavaScript plus at least one modern front-end framework (for example, React, Vue, Stimulus, or similar)

Solid API and integration experience, including designing and evolving RESTful APIs

Strong relational database skills: schema design, indexing, query optimization, and migrations at scale (PostgreSQL or similar)

Proven experience designing and evolving complex systems (monolith, modular monolith, or service-oriented architectures) in production

Experience with cloud and DevOps basics, including deploying and operating apps on AWS/GCP/Azure, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization (Docker)

Excellent communication in a remote environment: clear writing, clear trade-offs

Demonstrated ability to mentor other engineers and influence across multiple teams

Preferred

Experience with LLM/AI systems, such as fine-tuning open-source LLMs for instructional or educational use, designing RAG-enhanced LLM flows grounded in internal content, and building action-based LLM agents that trigger workflows or personalize learning

Deeper experience with observability tooling (for example, Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry)

Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, or Helm

Prior experience in EdTech or integrating with LMS/SIS APIs

Familiarity with compliance/security-sensitive domains (education, healthcare, finance) even if not K–12-specific