Software Engineer (principal Level)

Synthesia Synthesia · Multimodal · London, United Kingdom · Engineering

Principal Software Engineer for Synthesia, a leading AI video platform. The role focuses on backend systems, inter-service testing, overall stability, and steering backend direction. It involves end-to-end ownership of projects spanning quarters, working across the stack from React client to Python backend, and leading cross-team initiatives. The company is well-funded and values strong engineering culture and commercial success.

What you'd actually do

  1. You will focus on friction points around primarily backend issues for all teams in Engineering (90 Engineers). How should we do inter-service testing? Some teams are using monorepo, others aren’t. How can we bring overall stability up? Generally steering BE in the right direction. In the near future, standardising things across all of Engineering and bringing R&D teams (another 40 Engineers and Researchers) closer.
  2. You will have ownership of projects that span quarters, requiring you to have the ability to break a problem down into small steps that can be delivered and validated iteratively.
  3. You will evaluate your own work, leveraging our data pipeline and frameworks that we have established to understand the impact your features have on our commercial objectives and pivoting where necessary.
  4. You will consider the long-term direction of Engineering, making sure that we are developing the engineering capabilities that will allow us to stay ahead of the challenges we are likely to encounter in 12-18 months' time.
  5. You will work end-to-end, from our client application written in React to our monolithic backend written in Python, and lead projects that span across multiple teams.

Skills

Required

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience
  • Senior Staff/Principal level experience (L7+)
  • Leadership experience driving cross-team projects
  • Experience in high-performing, scaled engineering organizations
  • Deep server-side and backend knowledge
  • Experience with enterprise-grade SaaS products

Nice to have

  • Delivering AI-powered video generation products
  • Billing systems
  • Experimentation platforms
  • Video delivery systems
  • Online editors
  • Real-time collaboration

What the JD emphasized

  • at least 2 at the Senior Staff/Principal level (L7+)
  • Previous leadership experience in driving projects across multiple teams (50+ Engineers)
  • Experience in a high-performing engineering Org that is operating at scale
  • An ability to work across the stack, with deep knowledge on server side and all things back end related
  • delivering AI-powered video generation product