Shippo · 7 hours ago
Principal Software Engineer, Platform Enablement
United States
Contract
Remote
Lead/Staff
$212K/yr - $287K/yr
12+ years expShippo is a company that aims to be the shipping layer of the internet, providing logistics technology and infrastructure to help merchants succeed. The Principal Software Engineer will lead the Platform Enablement organization, focusing on technical strategy, architecture, and mentoring while ensuring consistency and security across the infrastructure.
B2BE-CommerceLogisticsSoftwareSupply Chain Management
Responsibilities
Define and drive the multi-year technical strategy for Shippo's platform capabilities across cloud infrastructure, developer experience, and security
Establish architectural guardrails and governance frameworks that enable teams to move fast while maintaining security and reliability
Design high-level systems that solve significantly complex problems involving cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and security tooling
Partner with Staff Engineers across Engineering to ensure clear ownership, system boundaries, and operational health
Establish company-wide engineering standards for infrastructure, deployment practices, and security by default
Create organizational mechanisms (templates, service catalogs, automated guardrails) that ensure teams maintain excellence without requiring direct oversight
Drive stronger application standards through self-service tooling and golden paths; reduce platform fragmentation and prevent siloed solutions
Identify and eliminate systemic organizational barriers that slow engineering velocity or create toil
Design and deliver solutions that maximize impact across the organization - from cost optimization to security automation to developer productivity
Conduct early investigation, prototyping, and experimentation to validate approaches before scaling across teams
Mentor and influence the career growth of Senior and Staff Engineers across platform teams
Navigate complex trade-offs (cost vs. security vs. velocity) with company-wide implications and drive adoption of difficult decisions
Partner with Security team to drive automation and secure-by-default practices into engineering workflows
Drive ownership and cost transparency for platform services that product teams consume
Maintain tight feedback loops with product teams to ensure platform capabilities directly address pain points
Lead proactive reviews of operational and system health across platform services
Produce long-lasting artifacts (talks, documentation, frameworks) that serve as force multipliers for the organization
Typically split time between shipping code, prototyping, libraries, and tooling (30%) and driving designs and standards in reviews (70%)
Qualification
Required
12+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in platform engineering, distributed systems, or infrastructure
Strong hands-on software development skills with the ability to write production-quality code, build prototypes, and develop internal tooling and libraries
Proven track record leading multi-year, org-wide technical initiatives at high-growth technology companies
Hands-on experience with cloud cost optimization, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and/or container orchestration (Kubernetes)
Experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, or improving engineering productivity at scale
Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy that aligns with business objectives and anticipate industry changes
Track record of building consensus across engineering leadership on complex architectural decisions
Experience establishing engineering standards and/or governance frameworks that scale
Proven ability to mentor senior technical talent and influence career growth
Excellent judgment in navigating trade-offs between competing priorities (cost, security, velocity, technical debt)
Strong communication skills - able to translate complex technical concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences
Comfortable with ambiguity - able to investigate, analyze, and prototype solutions before committing to broad rollouts
Strong analytical and data-driven decision making skills
Proven ability to build trust and collaborate effectively with product teams, security teams, and engineering leadership
Track record of driving engineering culture improvements and best practices adoption
Experience participating in hiring processes with a strong bar for technical excellence
BS or MS degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience
Preferred
Experience at companies with SaaS, e-commerce, or logistics platforms
Background in both application development and platform/infrastructure engineering
Strong cloud infrastructure experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) with demonstrated ability to balance cost, security, and developer experience
Working knowledge of security practices, compliance requirements, and secure-by-default architecture patterns
Contributions to open source projects or engineering community (talks, blog posts, frameworks)
Experience with usage-based infrastructure or multi-tenant platform architectures
Prior experience in startup or high-growth environments
Experience with service meshes (e.g. Istio)
Familiarity with configuration and maintenance of common infrastructure components such as Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch, and Hadoop
Experience with observability platforms (Datadog, New Relic, SumoLogic, etc.)
3+ years of experience in software development
Benefits
Healthcare coverage for medical, dental, and vision (90% covered by the company, incl. dependents). Pets coverage is also available!
Take-as-much-as-you-need vacation policy & flexible working
One week-long company wide winter slow down
3 Volunteer Days Off (VTOs)
WFH stipend to set up your home office
Charity donation match up to $100
Dedicated programs, coaching, tools, and resources for your professional and career growth as well as an individual learning stipend for your personal and focused growth
Fun team in person time through our Shippos Everywhere program which includes regular team and company off-sites throughout the year as well as local Shippos gatherings
Company
Shippo
Shippo is a shipping platform with tools for label creation, tracking, and carrier comparisons, saving time and cost.
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Shippo has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2024 (5)
2023 (8)
2022 (14)
2021 (11)
2020 (10)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$154.28MKey Investors
Bessemer Venture PartnersD1 Capital PartnersUnion Square Ventures
2021-06-02Series E· $50M
2021-02-23Series D· $45M
2020-04-07Series C· $30M
Leadership Team
Simon Kreuz
Co-Founder
Olivier Adler
CFO
Recent News
Digital Commerce 360
2026-01-17
2026-01-16
2025-12-29
Company data provided by crunchbase