Principal Engineer Jobs
Principal Engineer jobs are open across technology, fintech, healthtech, defense, and enterprise software, from senior engineer to staff and distinguished-level roles, with specializations in platform engineering, distributed systems, and infrastructure architecture. Find a role that fits from the openings below and apply directly.
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INTRODUCTION
As a family company, we serve people and communities. When you work at Meijer, you’re provided with career and community opportunities centered around leadership, personal growth and development. Consider joining our family – take care of your career and your community!
Grab the Good Stuff:
- Weekly pay
- Team member discount
- 401(k) with company contributions
- Paid parental leave
- Paid education assistance
- Development programs for advancement and career growth
- Medical/dental/vision
- And more!
Please review the job profile below and apply today!
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As a Principal Engineer, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping the future of our digital customer experience. You will drive the integration of AI and modern engineering practices across our eCommerce, mobile, and digital platforms—helping transform how customers discover, engage, and transact with our brand.
This is not just a hands-on engineering role—it is a force-multiplier position, where your ability to influence architecture, elevate engineering practices, and guide teams will directly impact customer satisfaction, personalization, and revenue growth.
This position will allow a flexible remote schedule. Must reside in our six-state footprint or be willing to relocate within our footprint including MI, IN, IL, OH, KY or WI.
What You’ll Be Leading (Customer Facing Digital Innovation and AI Focus):
- Define and advance our AI-powered digital experience strategy, helping drive AI engineered solutions working with teams that are delivering personalization, intelligent search, and customer-facing AI agents.
- Drive adoption of AI/GenAI patterns such as context engineering, prompt design, retrieval-augmented systems (RAG), and agent-based workflows to enhance developer productivity and customer experiences.
- Shape and scale customer-facing AI capabilities such as dynamic product recommendations, conversational experiences, and personalized content delivery.
- Lead the development of next-generation web and mobile platforms, leveraging modern frameworks (React, Next.js, React Native) and composable architectures (e.g., headless CMS).
- Partner with product, UX, and data teams to deliver intelligent, personalized, and seamless omnichannel experiences.
How You’ll Make an Impact:
- Set Technical Direction: Establish long-term architectural vision and ensure alignment across multiple teams and platforms.
- Accelerate Modernization: Identify and reduce technical debt while introducing scalable, forward-looking design patterns and AI-enabled workflows.
- Enable Teams at Scale: Act as a mentor and coach to senior engineers, helping elevate engineering maturity and consistency across domains.
- Drive Innovation Through POCs: Rapidly prototype and validate new technologies, with a focus on production-ready AI solutions and measurable business impact.
- Champion Engineering Excellence: Lead adoption of best practices in performance, scalability, security, observability, and maintainability.
What Sets This Opportunity Apart:
- AI-First Digital Transformation: Be at the forefront of integrating AI into real-world customer journeys—from personalized content to intelligent shopping assistants.
- High Visibility & Influence: Work closely with senior leadership to shape strategy and influence enterprise-wide technical direction.
- End-To-End Ownership: Engage across the entire digital ecosystem—from front-end experiences to backend systems, data, and AI pipelines.
- Innovation Culture: Experiment, iterate, and bring new ideas to life in a fast-moving, customer-focused environment.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Proven experience designing and delivering AI/ML or GenAI-powered applications in production environments.
- Thinks strategically about technology and business outcomes, not just code.
- Strong understanding of AI architecture patterns (prompt engineering, context management, vector databases, LLM orchestration, agent frameworks).
- Passionate about AI-driven innovation and digital customer experiences.
- Experience integrating AI into customer-facing digital products, such as personalization engines, recommendation systems, or conversational interfaces.
- Familiarity with data pipelines, APIs, and cloud-based AI services supporting scalable AI solutions.
- Balances hands-on technical depth with enterprise-level vision.
- Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical concepts into business value and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
COMPENSATION
- The pay range for this position is listed below.
$120,750.00 - $191,000.00
This pay range represents the minimum and maximum base pay for the position, which is determined by factors such as market data, the qualifications required, the level of responsibilities associated with the role and other roles at this same level. Your specific pay rate within this range will be based on your experience, qualifications, and skills compared to the internal team you’ll be joining.
We offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, life insurance, a 401(k) plan with employer match, disability leave, and paid time off (PTO). In addition to these core benefits, we are committed to supporting your overall well-being and career growth. Our offerings include a variety of programs designed to support your personal and professional development, such as paid parental leave, paid education assistance (including free education), a childcare subsidy and more. We are dedicated to creating a work environment that promotes work-life balance, long-term health and financial security, and continuous professional development.
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Find Principal Engineer JobsPrincipal Engineer Job Market
A snapshot from current openings nationwide, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- CVS Health158

- Palo Alto Networks119

- Oracle73

- Arcadis64

- NVIDIA63

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software1,232
- Electronics & Hardware553
- Consulting & Professional Services513
- Healthcare & Medical Services217
- Manufacturing179
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in principal engineer jobs.
- 10 or more years of software engineering experience with 3 or more years in a senior technical leadership role
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, microservices architecture, or large-scale platform design
- Proficiency in at least one primary language such as Java, Python, Go, or C++ at production scale
- Experience defining technical roadmaps, engineering standards, and cross-team architectural direction
- Strong background in cloud infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud including networking and reliability patterns
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a closely related field
Tips for Your Principal Engineer Job Search
Reframe your resume around influence
Principal engineer resumes stall when they read like senior engineer resumes. Replace task-based bullet points with outcomes you drove at org scale: architecture decisions adopted company-wide, engineering standards you authored, or systems that unblocked multiple teams.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists principal engineer openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Target companies at the right growth stage
Principal engineer roles are most clearly defined at companies large enough to have distinct staff and senior staff tiers. Series B and later startups, and enterprises mid-migration, hire most actively because architectural debt is acute and technical leadership is underdeveloped.
Prepare a system design narrative in advance
Most principal-level loops include at least one deep system design session. Walk in with two or three real examples you can detail end to end, covering the tradeoffs you rejected and why. Generic designs drawn from textbooks fail at this level.
Negotiate scope before negotiating compensation
At the principal level, the title can mean staff engineer, principal engineer, or distinguished engineer depending on the company ladder. Before discussing pay, clarify reporting structure, decision authority, and whether the role is individual contributor or carries direct reports.
Follow up with a written technical take
After a final-round system design interview, send a brief follow-up note that refines one tradeoff you discussed or flags a constraint you would handle differently. It signals the depth of thinking hiring managers expect from someone at this level.
Principal Engineer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most principal engineers?
The companies hiring the most principal engineers right now include CVS Health, Palo Alto Networks, and Oracle, with the largest share of openings in California, Texas, and Massachusetts, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. Demand is consistently highest at large technology companies, defense contractors, and enterprise software firms scaling platform and infrastructure teams.
How many principal engineer jobs are remote?
About 30% of principal engineer openings are fully remote or hybrid as of June 2026, making it one of the more remote-accessible senior technical roles. Platform engineering, distributed systems, and cloud architecture positions tend to offer the most location flexibility, while roles tied to hardware, embedded systems, or on-site lab environments are more likely to require in-person presence.
How do you become a principal engineer?
Becoming a principal engineer typically requires moving from senior engineer to a role where you own technical direction beyond your immediate team. The path involves leading cross-functional architecture decisions, mentoring multiple engineers, building a reputation for engineering judgment that other teams rely on, and demonstrating that your technical choices have measurable long-term impact on product reliability, scalability, or developer productivity.
Can you get hired as a principal engineer without prior principal-level experience?
Yes, candidates are hired at the principal level from strong senior engineer backgrounds when they can show scope that already matches the role. If you have owned architecture decisions that affected multiple teams, authored engineering standards adopted across an organization, or led a platform migration end to end, those contributions often carry more weight than holding a prior principal title at a smaller company.
What does the principal engineer interview process look like?
The principal engineer interview process typically runs four to six rounds and includes a recruiter screen, a hiring manager conversation focused on scope and leadership philosophy, one or two deep system design sessions, a behavioral or executive interview assessing cross-functional influence, and sometimes a technical presentation or architecture review. Loops at this level spend more time on judgment, tradeoffs, and organizational impact than on algorithmic coding problems.
Where can I find and apply to principal engineer jobs?
You can find and apply to principal engineer jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Search the available roles, find the ones that match your background and preferred location or remote setup, and apply directly to each listing.
See All 3,541+ Principal Engineer Jobs
Jump back to the full list of openings and apply to any principal engineer role that fits.
Find Principal Engineer Jobs