Sr Principal Engineer

Autodesk Autodesk · Enterprise · Toronto, ON +1

This role is for a Sr. Principal Engineer focused on building and scaling a modern Search Platform that powers search experiences across Autodesk's Industry Clouds. The role involves leading software architecture and system design for highly scalable, distributed, data-intensive micro-services, defining technical roadmaps, and mentoring engineers. While it mentions exposure to Vector Databases and ML Infrastructure as preferred qualifications, the core focus is on search infrastructure and microservices, not AI/ML model development itself.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead the software architecture and system design of highly scalable, distributed, data intensive micro-services
  2. Partner closely with product teams and leadership in defining strategic technical roadmap, communicate the strategy in various forums, and make it a reality
  3. Demonstrate high levels of ownership and accountability and work closely with engineering teams to deliver consistently
  4. Align the technical direction with business needs, leading the team to make the correct choices between short-term business opportunity and long-term technical vision
  5. Champion adopting industry best practices to push the development standards within the team and in the larger organization

Skills

Required

  • Java
  • AWS
  • Distributed Systems
  • Scalability
  • Performance
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Consistency
  • SaaS architectures
  • Platform and API-first mindset
  • modern technology stacks
  • API design
  • microservices
  • stream processing
  • resilience
  • operational excellence

Nice to have

  • Information Retrieval
  • Lucene/ElasticSearch/OpenSearch
  • Vector Databases
  • ML Infrastructure
  • Knowledge Graph/ Graph Databases
  • Cloud Infrastructure platforms such as AWS
  • monitoring
  • improving Reliability of a complex system at scale
  • managing Security and Compliance challenges in Cloud products and/or platforms

What the JD emphasized

  • 15+ years of experience in leading design of complex systems
  • 5+ years of experience in a technical leadership role for a large and distributed organization
  • Thorough understanding of Distributed Systems including Scalability, Performance, Reliability, Security and Consistency characteristics
  • Experience in building multi-tenant SaaS architectures
  • Expertise with modern technology stacks, API design, microservices, stream processing and designing for resilience and operational excellence