Principal Engineer Jobs in Palo Alto, CA
Principal Engineer jobs in Palo Alto are concentrated in the Stanford Research Park, downtown University Avenue corridor, and the adjacent Midtown district, where employers in deep tech, enterprise software, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure maintain active engineering teams. Companies hiring right now include JPMorganChase, Lanteris Space Systems Intuitive Machines Company, and Snap. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
Find Principal Engineer JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 916+ Principal Engineer jobs
If you are looking for a game-changing career, working for one of the world's leading financial institutions, you've come to the right place.
As a Principal Software Engineer at JPMorganChase within the Commercial and Investment Bank's Digital Channels & Connectivity organization, part of our broader Payments Technology group, you will be the senior technical authority for performance engineering across our platforms. This is a hands-on leadership role for an engineer who sets direction rather than waits for it. You will tackle the performance problems that others cannot, work across the full stack from the browser to the back end and down to the operating system, and define how performance is engineered, measured, and sustained at scale. You will set standards, mentor strong engineers, and build the tools and practices that make high performance a default rather than an afterthought. Just as importantly, you will shape the strategy, build the roadmap, and earn the support of senior stakeholders to see it through. If you want real ownership, deep technical challenges, and the chance to raise the bar for an entire organization, this is the role for you.
Job responsibilities
- Own the hardest cross-stack performance problems—from the browser through the back end down to the operating system—and establish the troubleshooting standards and playbooks others follow
- Define and institutionalize NFRs and SLOs (p95/p99 latency, throughput, ramp profiles, error budgets) and serve as the final technical authority for performance sign-offs across platform releases
- Drive proactive performance engineering through early bottleneck detection, architectural guidance, capacity modeling, and runtime tuning
- Build the tooling and infrastructure that turns performance testing into a scalable, self-service capability across teams
- Design and maintain automated performance test suites (load, stress, soak, spike, capacity) with environment-aware, fully automated execution
- Embed performance gates into CI/CD pipelines and build dashboards that correlate test signals with production telemetry against defined SLOs
- Architects and governs agentic AI-enabled engineering workflows (using enterprise-authorized tools within the work environment) to improve delivery speed, code quality, and operational outcomes at scale (e.g., AI-driven PR review assistance, test generation/maintenance, release readiness checks, incident triage and root-cause acceleration), while defining guardrails for validation, security, resiliency, and reuse across teams
- Applies knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI-assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automation at scale
Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills
- Extensive performance engineering experience (typically 12+ years) for high-traffic distributed systems—web, APIs, microservices, event-driven, and data-centric—built on a strong broader software engineering foundation
- Deep hands-on expertise debugging performance problems in distributed systems, with the ability to go as deep as the system call boundary; strong knowledge of JVM internals
- Fluency in both the Java (back-end) and Node.js/React (front-end) ecosystems, including front-end and browser-stack performance debugging best practices
- Hands-on software engineering experience with Java/Spring Boot and Kubernetes (self-managed and EKS)
- Strong systems and cloud performance depth, including Linux performance tooling, JVM tuning, containers, and OS-level troubleshooting under load
- Deep expertise in workload modeling, queuing theory, and statistical analysis of latency and throughput; fluent with percentile-based SLOs and error budgets
- Expert with at least one industry-standard load and protocol testing tool (e.g., JMeter, BlazeMeter, k6), with scripting and orchestration skills in Java, Python, or TypeScript for performance automation
- Strong observability and APM capabilities using tools such as Dynatrace and/or OpenTelemetry, plus RUM and synthetic monitoring, with dashboarding in Kibana and/or Grafana
- Proven ability to influence senior technical leaders, communicate complex performance trade-offs clearly, set engineering standards, and build tooling and practices that make high performance a scalable, self-service capability across teams
- Demonstrated experience designing and leading adoption of agentic AI-enabled development practices (using enterprise-authorized tools within the work environment) across teams, including setting standards for human-in-the-loop validation, auditability/traceability of changes, and secure handling of sensitive data
- Strong understanding of responsible AI use and control expectations in engineering workflows, including security/resiliency implications, data sensitivity, and risk-based governance; ability to influence senior technical leaders on safe scaling patterns and reuse
Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills
- Experience operating in financial-services scale, low-latency systems, and/or regulated environments
- Experience with data-platform performance optimization (e.g., Oracle tuning, JDBC pool tuning, Kafka throughput/partitioning, caching strategies)
- Experience with service virtualization and fault injection tools (e.g., WireMock, Mountebank, Toxiproxy), including record-replay and dynamic templating
- Familiarity with modern cloud-native load testing frameworks such as k6
- Familiarity with service mesh technologies (Istio/Linkerd) and traffic-control patterns (rate limiting, backpressure)
- Knowledge of advanced performance tooling (e.g., perf, eBPF) and production-grade troubleshooting practices
- Practical application of LLMs for test generation, anomaly detection, or automated reporting in engineering workflows
This position is subject to Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. As such, an employment offer for this position is contingent on JPMorgan Chase's review of criminal conviction history, including pretrial diversions or program entries.
ABOUT USWe offer a competitive total rewards package including base salary determined based on the role, experience, skill set and location. Those in eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation, paid in the form of cash and/or forfeitable equity, awarded in recognition of individual achievements and contributions. We also offer a range of benefits and programs to meet employee needs, based on eligibility. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage, on-site health and wellness centers, a retirement savings plan, backup childcare, tuition reimbursement, mental health support, financial coaching and more. Additional details about total compensation and benefits will be provided during the hiring process.
We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs. Visit our FAQs for more information about requesting an accommodation.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Veterans
ABOUT THE TEAM
J.P. Morgan's Commercial & Investment Bank is a global leader across banking, markets, securities services and payments. Corporations, governments and institutions throughout the world entrust us with their business in more than 100 countries. The Commercial & Investment Bank provides strategic advice, raises capital, manages risk and extends liquidity in markets around the world.
If you are looking for a game-changing career, working for one of the world's leading financial institutions, you've come to the right place.
As a Principal Software Engineer at JPMorganChase within the Commercial and Investment Bank's Digital Channels & Connectivity organization, part of our broader Payments Technology group, you will be the senior technical authority for performance engineering across our platforms. This is a hands-on leadership role for an engineer who sets direction rather than waits for it. You will tackle the performance problems that others cannot, work across the full stack from the browser to the back end and down to the operating system, and define how performance is engineered, measured, and sustained at scale. You will set standards, mentor strong engineers, and build the tools and practices that make high performance a default rather than an afterthought. Just as importantly, you will shape the strategy, build the roadmap, and earn the support of senior stakeholders to see it through. If you want real ownership, deep technical challenges, and the chance to raise the bar for an entire organization, this is the role for you.
Job responsibilities
- Own the hardest cross-stack performance problems—from the browser through the back end down to the operating system—and establish the troubleshooting standards and playbooks others follow
- Define and institutionalize NFRs and SLOs (p95/p99 latency, throughput, ramp profiles, error budgets) and serve as the final technical authority for performance sign-offs across platform releases
- Drive proactive performance engineering through early bottleneck detection, architectural guidance, capacity modeling, and runtime tuning
- Build the tooling and infrastructure that turns performance testing into a scalable, self-service capability across teams
- Design and maintain automated performance test suites (load, stress, soak, spike, capacity) with environment-aware, fully automated execution
- Embed performance gates into CI/CD pipelines and build dashboards that correlate test signals with production telemetry against defined SLOs
- Architects and governs agentic AI-enabled engineering workflows (using enterprise-authorized tools within the work environment) to improve delivery speed, code quality, and operational outcomes at scale (e.g., AI-driven PR review assistance, test generation/maintenance, release readiness checks, incident triage and root-cause acceleration), while defining guardrails for validation, security, resiliency, and reuse across teams
- Applies knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI-assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automation at scale
Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills
- Extensive performance engineering experience (typically 12+ years) for high-traffic distributed systems—web, APIs, microservices, event-driven, and data-centric—built on a strong broader software engineering foundation
- Deep hands-on expertise debugging performance problems in distributed systems, with the ability to go as deep as the system call boundary; strong knowledge of JVM internals
- Fluency in both the Java (back-end) and Node.js/React (front-end) ecosystems, including front-end and browser-stack performance debugging best practices
- Hands-on software engineering experience with Java/Spring Boot and Kubernetes (self-managed and EKS)
- Strong systems and cloud performance depth, including Linux performance tooling, JVM tuning, containers, and OS-level troubleshooting under load
- Deep expertise in workload modeling, queuing theory, and statistical analysis of latency and throughput; fluent with percentile-based SLOs and error budgets
- Expert with at least one industry-standard load and protocol testing tool (e.g., JMeter, BlazeMeter, k6), with scripting and orchestration skills in Java, Python, or TypeScript for performance automation
- Strong observability and APM capabilities using tools such as Dynatrace and/or OpenTelemetry, plus RUM and synthetic monitoring, with dashboarding in Kibana and/or Grafana
- Proven ability to influence senior technical leaders, communicate complex performance trade-offs clearly, set engineering standards, and build tooling and practices that make high performance a scalable, self-service capability across teams
- Demonstrated experience designing and leading adoption of agentic AI-enabled development practices (using enterprise-authorized tools within the work environment) across teams, including setting standards for human-in-the-loop validation, auditability/traceability of changes, and secure handling of sensitive data
- Strong understanding of responsible AI use and control expectations in engineering workflows, including security/resiliency implications, data sensitivity, and risk-based governance; ability to influence senior technical leaders on safe scaling patterns and reuse
Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills
- Experience operating in financial-services scale, low-latency systems, and/or regulated environments
- Experience with data-platform performance optimization (e.g., Oracle tuning, JDBC pool tuning, Kafka throughput/partitioning, caching strategies)
- Experience with service virtualization and fault injection tools (e.g., WireMock, Mountebank, Toxiproxy), including record-replay and dynamic templating
- Familiarity with modern cloud-native load testing frameworks such as k6
- Familiarity with service mesh technologies (Istio/Linkerd) and traffic-control patterns (rate limiting, backpressure)
- Knowledge of advanced performance tooling (e.g., perf, eBPF) and production-grade troubleshooting practices
- Practical application of LLMs for test generation, anomaly detection, or automated reporting in engineering workflows
This position is subject to Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. As such, an employment offer for this position is contingent on JPMorgan Chase's review of criminal conviction history, including pretrial diversions or program entries.
ABOUT USWe offer a competitive total rewards package including base salary determined based on the role, experience, skill set and location. Those in eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation, paid in the form of cash and/or forfeitable equity, awarded in recognition of individual achievements and contributions. We also offer a range of benefits and programs to meet employee needs, based on eligibility. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage, on-site health and wellness centers, a retirement savings plan, backup childcare, tuition reimbursement, mental health support, financial coaching and more. Additional details about total compensation and benefits will be provided during the hiring process.
We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs. Visit our FAQs for more information about requesting an accommodation.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Veterans
ABOUT THE TEAM
J.P. Morgan's Commercial & Investment Bank is a global leader across banking, markets, securities services and payments. Corporations, governments and institutions throughout the world entrust us with their business in more than 100 countries. The Commercial & Investment Bank provides strategic advice, raises capital, manages risk and extends liquidity in markets around the world.
See All 916+ Principal Engineer Jobs in Palo Alto
Find roles in Palo Alto that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal Engineer JobsPrincipal Engineer Job Market in Palo Alto
Who's Hiring
- JPMorganChase416
- Lanteris Space Systems Intuitive Machines Company167
- Snap83
- Delos Data83
- HTEC83H
Principal Engineer Jobs in Palo Alto: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a principal engineer job in Palo Alto?
The strongest path into a principal engineer role in Palo Alto is through the city's deep tech and enterprise software employers clustered in Stanford Research Park and along the El Camino Real corridor. Candidates who stand out combine a record of leading complex system design with experience in AI, semiconductors, or cloud infrastructure. Referrals through Stanford alumni networks and direct outreach to engineering leaders at local companies consistently outperform cold applications in this market.
Which companies hire principal engineers in Palo Alto?
Employers hiring principal engineers in Palo Alto right now include JPMorganChase, Lanteris Space Systems Intuitive Machines Company, and Snap, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Palo Alto's employer mix skews toward research-intensive technology companies, semiconductor firms, and enterprise software organizations with significant R&D investment.
Are there remote principal engineer jobs in Palo Alto?
Yes, though availability depends heavily on the role type. Principal engineering positions tied to hardware, lab environments, or on-site infrastructure tend to require in-person presence, while those focused on software architecture and distributed systems often support flexible arrangements. About 100% of principal engineer openings tied to Palo Alto are remote or hybrid as of November 2026. Software-focused and platform roles at Palo Alto's enterprise tech employers are the most likely to offer remote or hybrid flexibility.
How can I get a principal engineer job in Palo Alto with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is through a senior software engineer or staff engineer role at one of Palo Alto's mid-size technology companies, where promotion cycles to principal can move faster than at larger firms. Employers in the Stanford Research Park and early-stage companies along University Avenue frequently hire senior engineers with five or more years of experience and a clear architecture portfolio, then develop them internally toward principal-level scope.
Related Jobs in California
See All 916+ Principal Engineer Jobs in Palo Alto
Find roles in Palo Alto that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal Engineer Jobs