Principal Engineer Jobs in Tennessee
Principal Engineer jobs in Tennessee are concentrated in advanced manufacturing, defense and aerospace, energy infrastructure, and enterprise software, with demand reaching from mid-level technical leads through senior staff and distinguished engineer levels. Nashville, Knoxville, and Huntsville-adjacent corridor communities anchor most of the hiring, and established employers such as Bridgestone Americas, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and HCA Healthcare regularly carry open principal engineer requisitions. Systems architecture, embedded software, and mechanical and civil infrastructure engineering draw the strongest and most consistent demand from Tennessee hiring managers. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 58+ Principal Engineer jobs
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Kubernetes Engine (OKE) team is looking for an experienced Senior Principal Site Reliability Engineer to help build and operate a Kubernetes platform at global scale.
In this hands-on technical leadership role, you will solve problems spanning distributed systems, Kubernetes, networking, cloud infrastructure, and deployment automation. You will improve how services launch in new cloud regions, validate releases, recover from failures, and use infrastructure efficiently. Your work will combine software engineering, systems expertise, and close collaboration with teams across OCI.
You will own complex initiatives from design through implementation and operational handover. Projects may include automating regional service deployments, improving release validation, planning software upgrades, strengthening cloud access controls, and eliminating recurring operational work. You will also serve as a technical escalation resource and help other engineers grow through mentoring, design reviews, and knowledge sharing.
We are looking for someone with strong Cloud Infrastructure, Linux, and networking fundamentals; experience operating production distributed systems; and the ability to build maintainable software and infrastructure automation. You should be comfortable investigating unfamiliar systems, making sound decisions about reliability and security, and bringing multiple teams together to deliver a solution.
Deep experience with Terraform, automated deployment pipelines, observability, cloud identity and access management, is expected. Experience with OCI or another major cloud platform is valuable.
This role offers the opportunity to influence service architecture and engineering practices while delivering tangible improvements: safer releases, more predictable region launches, faster recovery, and less operational toil.
Key Responsibilities
Infrastructure Architecture and Capacity Management
- Lead the design and evolution of reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure for OCI Kubernetes services.
- Plan infrastructure capacity for new region launches and service growth, addressing resource constraints, hardware differences, and availability requirements.
- Partner with software engineering teams to improve service architecture, deployment dependencies, and readiness for new cloud environments.
- Evaluate and prototype infrastructure improvements, including smaller service footprints and more efficient compute configurations. Identify opportunities to reduce cloud costs through rightsizing, resource lifecycle automation, and safe removal of unused infrastructure.
Incident and Service Lifecycle Management
- Lead operational readiness throughout the service lifecycle, from initial provisioning and regional deployment through upgrades and decommissioning.
- Use service health, performance, and capacity data to identify risks and prioritize engineering improvements.
- Plan and execute Kubernetes upgrades, infrastructure changes, and security updates with appropriate validation and recovery procedures.
- Improve release safety through reliable artifact publication, automated health checks, controlled rollouts, and tested rollback strategies. Strengthen infrastructure security through appropriate access controls, secure configuration, and sustainable remediation practices.
Automation
- Identify recurring operational work and lead automation initiatives that improve reliability, deployment speed, and engineering efficiency.
- Design, implement, and maintain infrastructure as code, deployment workflows, and tools for provisioning, monitoring, diagnosis, and remediation.
- Build repeatable region-build testing and service validation that expose configuration errors, missing dependencies, and artifact issues before deployment.
- Test complex automation for correctness, failure handling, recovery, and safe operation across environments. Guide engineers in designing maintainable automation and establishing clear ownership and operational documentation.
Technical Communication and Guidance
- Communicate service architecture, operational risks, capacity needs, and deployment requirements clearly to engineering teams and leadership.
- Explain the impact and tradeoffs of infrastructure and service changes, including implications for availability, security, cost, and delivery.
- Create and maintain design documents, runbooks, upgrade plans, and operational handover materials. Mentor engineers through technical reviews, hands-on troubleshooting, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
Troubleshooting and Resolution
- Serve as a technical escalation point for complex failures across Kubernetes control planes, management services, networking, identity, storage, and cloud infrastructure.
- Participate in on-call rotations and lead technical investigations to restore service and protect customer workloads.
- Coordinate resolution of issues spanning multiple services and teams, using evidence from logs, metrics, configuration, and source code.
- Lead root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews, documenting contributing factors and lessons learned. Drive corrective actions through implementation and validation to prevent recurring incidents.
Innovation and Improvement
- Identify architectural bottlenecks and improve deployment orchestration, service validation, and recovery mechanisms.
- Evaluate tools and technologies that improve infrastructure reliability and engineering productivity while meeting security requirements.
- Use operational evidence to prioritize improvements and measure their effect on deployment time, service health, resource consumption, and manual effort. Turn successful solutions into reusable tools and practices that benefit multiple engineering teams.
Core Responsibilities
Planning and Execution
- Own complex engineering initiatives from problem definition and design through delivery and operational handover.
- Establish milestones, track dependencies, communicate risks, and adjust plans as priorities or capacity change. Balance project delivery with operational responsibilities and long-term reliability improvements.
Collaboration and Partnership
- Build effective partnerships across service development, infrastructure, security, and region-build teams.
- Establish clear responsibilities and readiness criteria for shared workflows and service handovers. Resolve dependencies and technical disagreements through clear communication, evidence, and shared delivery goals.
Problem Solving
- Bring structure to ambiguous problems spanning multiple systems or teams.
- Investigate underlying causes, evaluate tradeoffs, and deliver durable solutions. Exercise sound judgment when making changes to production infrastructure and customer-facing services.
Continuous Learning
- Maintain deep expertise in Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and site reliability engineering.
- Apply new knowledge to improve service design and operations. Develop other engineers through mentoring, constructive feedback, and practical technical training.
#LI-SP1
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Kubernetes Engine (OKE) team is looking for an experienced Senior Principal Site Reliability Engineer to help build and operate a Kubernetes platform at global scale.
In this hands-on technical leadership role, you will solve problems spanning distributed systems, Kubernetes, networking, cloud infrastructure, and deployment automation. You will improve how services launch in new cloud regions, validate releases, recover from failures, and use infrastructure efficiently. Your work will combine software engineering, systems expertise, and close collaboration with teams across OCI.
You will own complex initiatives from design through implementation and operational handover. Projects may include automating regional service deployments, improving release validation, planning software upgrades, strengthening cloud access controls, and eliminating recurring operational work. You will also serve as a technical escalation resource and help other engineers grow through mentoring, design reviews, and knowledge sharing.
We are looking for someone with strong Cloud Infrastructure, Linux, and networking fundamentals; experience operating production distributed systems; and the ability to build maintainable software and infrastructure automation. You should be comfortable investigating unfamiliar systems, making sound decisions about reliability and security, and bringing multiple teams together to deliver a solution.
Deep experience with Terraform, automated deployment pipelines, observability, cloud identity and access management, is expected. Experience with OCI or another major cloud platform is valuable.
This role offers the opportunity to influence service architecture and engineering practices while delivering tangible improvements: safer releases, more predictable region launches, faster recovery, and less operational toil.
Key Responsibilities
Infrastructure Architecture and Capacity Management
- Lead the design and evolution of reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure for OCI Kubernetes services.
- Plan infrastructure capacity for new region launches and service growth, addressing resource constraints, hardware differences, and availability requirements.
- Partner with software engineering teams to improve service architecture, deployment dependencies, and readiness for new cloud environments.
- Evaluate and prototype infrastructure improvements, including smaller service footprints and more efficient compute configurations. Identify opportunities to reduce cloud costs through rightsizing, resource lifecycle automation, and safe removal of unused infrastructure.
Incident and Service Lifecycle Management
- Lead operational readiness throughout the service lifecycle, from initial provisioning and regional deployment through upgrades and decommissioning.
- Use service health, performance, and capacity data to identify risks and prioritize engineering improvements.
- Plan and execute Kubernetes upgrades, infrastructure changes, and security updates with appropriate validation and recovery procedures.
- Improve release safety through reliable artifact publication, automated health checks, controlled rollouts, and tested rollback strategies. Strengthen infrastructure security through appropriate access controls, secure configuration, and sustainable remediation practices.
Automation
- Identify recurring operational work and lead automation initiatives that improve reliability, deployment speed, and engineering efficiency.
- Design, implement, and maintain infrastructure as code, deployment workflows, and tools for provisioning, monitoring, diagnosis, and remediation.
- Build repeatable region-build testing and service validation that expose configuration errors, missing dependencies, and artifact issues before deployment.
- Test complex automation for correctness, failure handling, recovery, and safe operation across environments. Guide engineers in designing maintainable automation and establishing clear ownership and operational documentation.
Technical Communication and Guidance
- Communicate service architecture, operational risks, capacity needs, and deployment requirements clearly to engineering teams and leadership.
- Explain the impact and tradeoffs of infrastructure and service changes, including implications for availability, security, cost, and delivery.
- Create and maintain design documents, runbooks, upgrade plans, and operational handover materials. Mentor engineers through technical reviews, hands-on troubleshooting, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
Troubleshooting and Resolution
- Serve as a technical escalation point for complex failures across Kubernetes control planes, management services, networking, identity, storage, and cloud infrastructure.
- Participate in on-call rotations and lead technical investigations to restore service and protect customer workloads.
- Coordinate resolution of issues spanning multiple services and teams, using evidence from logs, metrics, configuration, and source code.
- Lead root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews, documenting contributing factors and lessons learned. Drive corrective actions through implementation and validation to prevent recurring incidents.
Innovation and Improvement
- Identify architectural bottlenecks and improve deployment orchestration, service validation, and recovery mechanisms.
- Evaluate tools and technologies that improve infrastructure reliability and engineering productivity while meeting security requirements.
- Use operational evidence to prioritize improvements and measure their effect on deployment time, service health, resource consumption, and manual effort. Turn successful solutions into reusable tools and practices that benefit multiple engineering teams.
Core Responsibilities
Planning and Execution
- Own complex engineering initiatives from problem definition and design through delivery and operational handover.
- Establish milestones, track dependencies, communicate risks, and adjust plans as priorities or capacity change. Balance project delivery with operational responsibilities and long-term reliability improvements.
Collaboration and Partnership
- Build effective partnerships across service development, infrastructure, security, and region-build teams.
- Establish clear responsibilities and readiness criteria for shared workflows and service handovers. Resolve dependencies and technical disagreements through clear communication, evidence, and shared delivery goals.
Problem Solving
- Bring structure to ambiguous problems spanning multiple systems or teams.
- Investigate underlying causes, evaluate tradeoffs, and deliver durable solutions. Exercise sound judgment when making changes to production infrastructure and customer-facing services.
Continuous Learning
- Maintain deep expertise in Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and site reliability engineering.
- Apply new knowledge to improve service design and operations. Develop other engineers through mentoring, constructive feedback, and practical technical training.
#LI-SP1
See All 58 Principal Engineer Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Principal Engineer JobsPrincipal Engineer Jobs by City in Tennessee
Where Tennessee roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Principal Engineer Job Market in Tennessee
A snapshot from current Tennessee openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Oracle38
- Beehive-Industries2
- CS31
- FedEx1
- Wesco1
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Chemicals & Materials
- Mining & Natural Resources
What Tennessee Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in principal engineer jobs across Tennessee.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in engineering or a closely related technical discipline required
- Ten or more years of progressive engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership
- Ability to obtain or hold Professional Engineer licensure recognized by the Tennessee Board of Architectural and Engineering Examiners
- Proven experience owning system-level design decisions across complex, multi-team engineering programs
- Proficiency in architecture or design tools relevant to the specialty, such as CAD, MATLAB, or cloud platforms
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for cross-functional stakeholder engagement and design documentation
Principal Engineer Jobs in Tennessee: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a principal engineer in Tennessee?
Most principal engineer roles in Tennessee require a bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline and many years of progressively senior technical experience, typically a decade or more. For roles in civil, structural, mechanical, or related fields, licensure as a Professional Engineer through the Tennessee Board of Architectural and Engineering Examiners strengthens candidacy significantly and is required for certain public-sector and infrastructure roles. Employers in defense and energy sectors often also expect relevant domain certifications or security clearances.
Which companies hire principal engineers in Tennessee?
Employers hiring principal engineers in Tennessee right now include Oracle, Beehive-Industries, and CS3, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Tennessee's concentration of defense contractors near Oak Ridge, large manufacturing headquarters around Nashville, and growing enterprise technology operations across the state means the employer mix tends to skew toward established industrial and infrastructure organizations rather than early-stage startups.
Which Tennessee cities have the most principal engineer jobs?
Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis account for the largest concentration of principal engineer openings in Tennessee. Nashville drives volume through its headquarters-heavy corporate base and growing technology sector, Knoxville benefits from proximity to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee research partnerships, and smaller metros round out the list where anchor manufacturers or utilities maintain large engineering campuses that generate consistent senior-level demand.
Are there remote principal engineer jobs in Tennessee?
Yes, though availability varies considerably by specialty. About 40% of principal engineer openings tied to Tennessee are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting the mixed nature of the role. Software and cloud architecture specialties carry the most remote flexibility, while principal engineers in manufacturing, facilities, or embedded hardware are almost always required on-site given the hands-on coordination their work demands.
How can I get hired as a principal engineer in Tennessee with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is through an associate or staff engineer role at a large Tennessee employer, building toward the principal level over time. Employers such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and major Nashville-area manufacturers run structured new-graduate and early-career programs that place candidates in rotational or mentored positions. Pursuing a Professional Engineer license through the Tennessee Board of Architectural and Engineering Examiners, even while still at the engineer-in-training stage, signals long-term commitment and accelerates progression toward principal-level consideration.
Where can I find and apply to principal engineer jobs in Tennessee?
You can find and apply to principal engineer jobs in Tennessee on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from employers hiring across the state right now. Search the listings for roles that match your specialty and experience level, then apply directly to the ones that fit.
See All 58 Principal Engineer Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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