Principal Software Engineer - Backend
Autodesk
About the role
Job Requisition ID #
26WD97363
Position Overview
We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer – Backend to join Autodesk’s Enterprise Data Management (EDM) organization within the COO-GET Engineering group. This is a senior individual contributor role operating at the Principal (P4) level, expected to drive technology direction for large, complex, and business-critical backend and distributed systems.
This role is anchored in backend software engineering excellence: designing, building, and evolving scalable services, APIs, and event-driven systems that operate at enterprise scale. As a Principal Engineer, you will work with high autonomy and ambiguity, shape long-term architecture, and influence multiple teams and domains. Familiarity with data engineering concepts is valuable, but backend systems, service design, and distributed systems are the core competencies.
You will function as a technical authority and force multiplier—guiding design decisions, setting standards, and ensuring Autodesk’s core data services are reliable, resilient, and evolvable over time.
Responsibilities
Provide principal-level technical leadership across multiple backend and platform teams, shaping architecture and technical strategy beyond a single squad or service
Author and evolve critical backend systems and APIs, ensuring they meet long-term scalability, reliability, and extensibility goals
Lead design of distributed, event-driven systems, addressing consistency, ordering, failure handling, replay, idempotency, rate limiting, and backpressure
Establish and drive service and API standards across domains, including schema design, versioning strategies, backward compatibility, and consumer experience
Act as a technical decision-maker for cross-team initiatives; evaluate tradeoffs and make durable architectural choices aligned with business priorities
Drive operational excellence across systems you influence: observability, alerting strategy, incident response, post-incident learning, and systemic remediation
Introduce and reinforce engineering best practices for design reviews, code quality, testing, CI/CD, and production readiness across multiple teams
Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders; raise the bar through influence, example, and coaching rather than direct management
Partner deeply with product, data, and platform leaders to translate ambiguous business problems into clear, actionable technical solutions
Remain hands-on where impact is highest: complex system design, critical implementations, architectural refactors, and high-severity incident resolution
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant depth in backend and distributed systems
Experience building enterprise platform services consumed by many internal and/or external teams.
Python + AWS + API + backend services integration experience
Demonstrated expertise building and operating backend services and APIs in production environments at scale
Strong experience with distributed systems design, including asynchronous processing, messaging, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance
Deep hands-on experience with AWS and cloud-native architectures (compute, storage, messaging, IAM, observability, scaling patterns)
Proven ownership of mission-critical systems, including design accountability, operational responsibility, and long-term maintainability
Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, service-level data modeling, API design, automated testing, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code
Track record of influencing architecture and engineering outcomes across multiple teams without formal authority
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
Preferred Qualifications
Familiarity with data engineering or data platform ecosystems (e.g., streaming pipelines, data warehouses such as Snowflake) as a producer or advanced consumer of data services
Experience with event streaming and messaging platforms (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalents)
Background in domains such as master data management, identity resolution, data enrichment, or data quality
Experience integrating backend services with analytics, search/indexing, or ML/AI platforms
Prior experience operating in large, complex organizations where systems span multiple teams, regions, and business units
Learn More
About Autodesk
Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.
We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.
When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!
Benefits
From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/
Salary transparency
Salary is one part of Autodesk’s competitive compensation package. For U.S.-based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $139,000 and $249,260. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.
Equal Employment Opportunity
At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.
Belonging
We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/global-belonging
In-Person Onboarding and Identity Verification
This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.
Responsibilities
- Shape backend architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams.
- Design and evolve scalable backend systems, APIs, and distributed event-driven services.
- Set service and API standards, including schema design, versioning, and backward compatibility.
- Drive operational excellence through observability, incident response, and systemic remediation.
- Promote engineering best practices for design reviews, testing, CI/CD, and production readiness.
- Mentor engineers and technical leaders through influence and coaching.
- Partner with product, data, and platform leaders to translate business needs into technical solutions.
- Contribute hands-on to complex system design, critical implementations, and incident resolution.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with depth in backend and distributed systems.
- Experience building enterprise platform services used by multiple teams.
- Experience with Python, AWS, APIs, and backend service integrations.
- Expertise building and operating production backend services and APIs at scale.
- Strong knowledge of asynchronous processing, messaging, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance.
- Hands-on experience with AWS cloud-native architectures.
- Experience owning mission-critical systems and their long-term maintainability.
Benefits
- Health and financial benefits.
- Time away and wellness benefits.
- Potential annual cash bonuses and stock grants.
Skills mentioned
About Autodesk
Autodesk is changing how the world is designed and made. Our technology spans architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, and media and entertainment. We empower innovators everywhere to solve challenges, big and small. From greener buildings to smarter products and more mesmerizing blockbusters, Autodesk software helps our customers design and make a better world for all. Over 100 million people use Autodesk software, like AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, 3ds Max, Fusion 360, SketchBook, and more, to unlock their creativity and solve important design, business, and environmental challenges. Our software runs on both personal computers and mobile devices. It taps the infinite computing power of the cloud to help teams around the world collaborate, design, simulate, and fabricate their ideas in 3D. We provide exceptional compensation and benefit packages, and we’d love for you to join us. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and we consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, disability, veteran status, or other protected category. To see our culture in action, check out #AutodeskLife. We are headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and have over 10,000 employees worldwide.
H-1B sponsorship history
Historical employer filing data was found for Autodesk. The employer record includes 1,760 historical certified applications. This is employer-level history, not a guarantee that this role currently offers sponsorship.