Top Principal Software Engineer Jobs in Denver & Boulder, CO

Leads the technical vision, architecture, and development of a high-fidelity spacecraft simulation platform. Designs multi-physics models, numerical solvers, APIs, and scalable real-time or batch simulation infrastructure using C++ and Python. Establishes verification and validation practices, engineering standards, and software quality expectations. Partners with GNC, mission planning, autonomy, and systems engineering teams while mentoring engineers and guiding cross-functional technical direction.

Owns company-critical, long-term technical problems across multiple teams and organizations. Defines technical strategy, architectures, roadmaps, and engineering standards for large-scale customer-facing systems. Remains hands-on in software development while driving AI adoption in products and engineering workflows. Partners with senior product, engineering, and executive leaders to resolve complex problems, improve reliability and performance, and shape Dropbox’s technical direction.

Leads technical direction for scalable, secure, resilient software platforms while remaining hands-on with architecture, implementation, prototyping, debugging, and complex engineering problems. Modernizes legacy systems toward cloud-native, API-first, and AI-enabled architectures; establishes engineering standards; improves automation, testing, observability, and developer productivity; and mentors senior technical leaders across teams.

Lead the mobile engineering team in evolving iOS and Android applications toward an AI-native, thin-client architecture. Define participant API and platform direction, contribute Python to backend services, establish AI-assisted development processes, improve DevOps and continuous delivery, mentor engineers, and partner closely with Product and Design. The role requires principal-level technical leadership, product focus, system architecture expertise, and hands-on use of AI coding agents.

Leads embedded software development for satellite, airborne, and ground systems. Responsibilities include software requirements, architecture, design, coding, testing, integration, documentation, and support across the full life cycle. Develops embedded software and test infrastructure using technologies such as C/C++, Rust, Python, and Embedded Linux. Collaborates across teams, supports software quality practices, and may contribute to technical leadership, simulation, DevSecOps, and Agile development activities.

Leads embedded software development for satellite, airborne, and ground systems. Responsibilities include software architecture, design, coding, testing, integration, documentation, lifecycle support, and test infrastructure development. The role requires expertise in embedded Linux and languages such as C/C++, Rust, and Python, with potential work involving FPGAs, messaging, device trees, and Linux distributions. This is an on-site position requiring regular in-person work and possible travel between company and other locations.

Leads embedded software development for satellite, airborne, and ground systems. Responsibilities include software requirements, architecture, design, coding, testing, integration, documentation, and support across the full lifecycle. The role develops embedded software and test infrastructure using technologies such as C/C++, Rust, Python, Embedded Linux, FPGA interfaces, messaging systems, and Yocto/PetaLinux. It also contributes to team leadership, formal development practices, CI/CD, simulation, DevSecOps, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.

Principal Software Engineer leading architecture and hands-on development for Swiftly’s multi-tenant ads and martech platform. Responsibilities include designing distributed systems, migrating legacy services without downtime, optimizing a low-latency Go ad server, defining database and service contracts, integrating ad-tech platforms, operating Azure production services, and setting engineering quality standards across testing, observability, CI/CD, security, and infrastructure.

Lead technical strategy and architecture for Azure Storage geo-replication, data protection, failover orchestration, and business continuity. Drive cross-team delivery, operational excellence, telemetry, automation, AI-assisted operations, and represent the team in executive and customer engagements.

Leads architecture, development, testing, and deployment of hyperscale distributed storage systems optimized for AI and machine learning workloads. Drives innovations in scalability, performance, security, durability, and efficiency; collaborates with AI and cloud infrastructure teams; mentors engineers; and evaluates emerging technologies for AI-native storage.

Develop, integrate, test, and maintain embedded software and ground-system applications. Build CI/CD pipelines, automated tests, and containerized solutions while applying systems engineering practices for requirements, interfaces, verification, and validation. Support customer design reviews and mission integration activities, collaborate across engineering teams, present technical information, and provide leadership and mentorship. The role requires on-site work, an active Secret clearance, and eligibility to obtain TS/SCI.

Develop, integrate, test, and maintain embedded software and ground-system applications. Build CI/CD pipelines, automated testing infrastructure, and technical solutions for complex software integration challenges. Support systems engineering activities, customer program reviews, presentations, and mission integration. Provide technical leadership, mentor less-experienced employees, and collaborate across engineering teams. The role requires on-site work, an active Secret clearance, and the ability to obtain and maintain TS/SCI clearance.

Develop, integrate, test, and maintain embedded software and ground systems, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and integrations with industry-standard applications. Apply systems engineering practices for requirements, verification, validation, interfaces, and design reviews. Support customer program gates, mission integration, and technical presentations while providing leadership and mentoring to less experienced engineers. The role requires on-site work five days per week and an active Secret clearance with the ability to obtain TS/SCI.

Provides technical leadership for architecture and evolution of large-scale distributed data platforms supporting Azure network telemetry. Designs streaming and batch systems, establishes reusable engineering patterns, drives cross-team technical strategy, and owns capabilities from design through production operations. Ensures scalability, reliability, security, performance, data quality, and operational excellence while mentoring engineers and influencing technical leaders. The role also involves architectural reviews, dependency management, risk reduction, and applying AI or machine learning approaches to operational systems.

Leads architecture and production delivery of a near-real-time observability platform for large-scale AI supercomputers. Responsibilities include telemetry ingestion, processing, storage, querying, topology and health modeling, 1P/3P data convergence, AI-assisted anomaly detection, technician dashboards, repair validation, security, reliability, cross-team technical leadership, and mentoring.

Design and lead development of high-performance networking infrastructure for large-scale AI training and inference in Azure. Architect low-latency, low-jitter communication frameworks, optimize distributed systems, benchmark scalability, resolve complex networking issues, and improve reliability, observability, and performance. Mentor engineers, create technical designs, manage dependencies, and participate in on-call operations for critical services.

Leads engineering within a product domain, driving large-scale strategic initiatives across multiple teams. Establishes technical standards, architecture, and scalable best practices; aligns engineering, product, data science, and business stakeholders; guides roadmaps and resource allocation; communicates with executives; and coaches engineering leaders and senior individual contributors.

Build and own Arcadia’s internal developer platform across a large-scale data lakehouse and Kubernetes applications. Develop self-service APIs, templates, golden paths, CI/CD capabilities, observability, security controls, and reliability practices. Lead platform migrations, improve developer experience, manage stakeholder needs and costs, set technical direction, and coach senior engineers. The role requires hands-on software development alongside expertise in cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, infrastructure as code, SLOs, incident response, and platform product management.

Lead architecture and hands-on development for Microsoft's virtualization platform, focusing on hypervisor and VMM capabilities. Design, implement, and optimize systems software across Windows, Linux, macOS, Azure, and containers. Improve performance, security, reliability, testing, and operational readiness; diagnose low-level hardware/software issues; enable virtualization on new silicon; mentor engineers; and influence platform strategy across teams and hardware partners.

Designs and develops Go microservices, Kubernetes controllers, and Linux networking software for HPE enterprise storage systems. Builds highly available distributed services, automates data-center network switch management and upgrades, develops software distribution services, and creates comprehensive automated tests. Troubleshoots customer issues, reviews designs and code, collaborates across storage and cloud teams, and mentors engineers.

Build and improve Azure Kubernetes Service capabilities for Linux and Windows containers. Develop distributed cloud infrastructure, automation, observability tooling, and reliability improvements at global scale. Support AI-native infrastructure, including GPU orchestration, model deployment, inference, and platform operations. Accelerate engineering workflows, prevent production incidents, integrate AI tools, and contribute to Kubernetes and cloud-native platform innovation.

Provide technical leadership designing, building, and operating production-grade developer platforms to improve software validation and release confidence. Drive platform modernization, large-scale migrations, and cross-team architectural change while contributing hands-on and mentoring senior engineers.

Design, develop, deploy, and operate cloud-scale Azure regional networking infrastructure spanning router hardware, operating systems, optical transceivers, and distributed orchestration systems. Lead architecture and cross-team technical initiatives, write maintainable code, improve reliability, observability, performance, and automation, apply AI-driven engineering practices, and mentor engineers while collaborating with hardware, supply chain, datacenter operations, research, vendors, and senior leaders.

Own the architecture, implementation, and operational excellence of major Azure Boost DPU software components. Develop low-level systems software spanning operating systems, virtualization, networking, storage, device management, and hardware interfaces. Lead complex cross-functional initiatives, optimize hyperscale performance and reliability, resolve system-level issues, establish engineering practices, influence platform architecture, and mentor engineers across Azure infrastructure teams.

Leads embedded software development for satellite, airborne, and ground systems. Responsibilities include software requirements, architecture, design, coding, testing, integration, documentation, support, and test infrastructure development. The role requires expertise in C/C++, Rust, Python, Embedded Linux, software lifecycle practices, Linux deployment, object-oriented design, UML, and configuration management. Preferred experience includes technical leadership, Agile, simulation, Yocto, DevSecOps, serialization, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.