Principal Engineer

About the Role

                                                         
We are looking for a Principal Engineer to join our Cloud Platform team and take ownership of the architecture and evolution of our multi-tenant SaaS platform. You will work at the intersection of backend engineering and cloud infrastructure, designing and building the systems that power our control plane and data plane at scale.                                                                               

This is a high-impact, high-ownership role. You will be a technical anchor for the team — driving architecture decisions, mentoring engineers, and partnering with product and infrastructure leaders to shape the future of our cloud platform.
                                                                                          

What You Will Do

                                             
 Architecture & Design

  - Own end-to-end architecture for the cloud platform, spanning control plane and data plane                                                                                                                  
  - Design multi-tenant systems with strong isolation, security, and resource governance                                                                                                                       
  - Define platform abstractions that work across hybrid environments AWS, GCP, Azure, and on-premises                                                                                                       
  - Drive architectural reviews, RFCs, and ensure decisions are well-reasoned, documented, and scalable    

                                               
Control Plane  

   
  - Architect and build systems for tenant provisioning, lifecycle management, and configuration                                                                                                               
  - Design cluster orchestration and management systems that operate reliably at scale                                                                                                                         
  - Build APIs and automation that enable self-service for operators and tenants                                                                                                               
  - Ensure control plane is highly available, auditable, and observable                                                                                      
Data Plane   

                              
  - Design data path components for high-throughput, low-latency workloads                                                                                                                                     
  - Build and enforce isolation boundaries between tenants at the data layer                                                                                                                                   
  - Optimise for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at scale     
                                           

Engineering Excellence 
                      
  - Set technical direction and coding standards for the platform team                                                                                                                                         
  - Identify and address systemic risks — reliability, scalability, security, and operability                                                                                                                  
  - Partner with SRE and DevOps on observability, incident response, and capacity planning   
                                 
Mentorship & Leadership 
                           
  - Mentor and grow senior and mid-level engineers                                                                                   
  - Contribute to hiring, define bar, conduct interviews, help build the India platform team                                                                                                                  
  - Collaborate closely with cross geo-based engineering and product teams            

Must Have      
    
SaaS Platform & Multi-Tenancy

  - Hands-on experience building or operating multi-tenant SaaS platforms at scale silo/pool/bridge models, noisy neighbour mitigation, tenant resource quotas, and lifecycle automation (onboarding, provisioning, offboarding)
  - Knowledge of data isolation strategies schema-per-tenant, database-per-tenant, row-level security, and per-tenant encryption at rest

Control Plane & Data Plane

  - Proven experience with control plane / data plane separation and cluster management — Kubernetes operators, CRDs, admission webhooks, RBAC, and namespace isolation
  - Understanding of configuration management at scale — GitOps workflows, feature flags, and dynamic config propagation across distributed environments

Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure

  - Deep expertise in at least two of AWS, GCP, or Azure VPC, IAM, managed Kubernetes (EKS/GKE/AKS), IaC (Terraform/Pulumi), and cost optimisation across hybrid environments
  - Familiarity with service mesh technologies — Istio, Linkerd, or Envoy — for traffic management, mTLS, and microservices observability

Distributed Systems & Security

  - Strong grasp of distributed systems fundamentals HA patterns, fault tolerance, observability (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana), and resilience testing
  - Understanding of zero-trust security, secrets management (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR) at the infrastructure level

AI-Augmented Engineering

  - Actively uses AI coding assistants — Claude, Cursor, Copilot — for infrastructure tasks, runbook generation, incident analysis, and ADR drafting
  - Able to craft effective prompts for complex engineering problems and critically evaluate AI output; evaluates and drives AI tool adoption across the platform team

Good to Have          

                                                                                                  
  - Exposure to FinOps practices — cost attribution per tenant, showback/chargeback models, and cloud cost anomaly detection                                                                                   
- Hands-on experience building and maintaining observability platforms — centralised logging pipelines, metrics dashboards (Grafana, Datadog, or equivalent), distributed tracing infrastructure, and alert management systems that give engineering teams real-time visibility into platform health

  - Contributions to open-source infrastructure or platform projects                      

What Success Looks Like                                                

In 3 months:    

  - Deep understanding of the current platform architecture, gaps, and roadmap                                                                                                                                 
  - Shipped at least one meaningful improvement to control or data plane                                                                                                                                       
  - Established strong working relationships across engineering and product            

In 6 months:  

                                 
  - Own and drive architecture for one major platform initiative end-to-end                                                                                                                                    
  - Identified and mitigated at least one systemic risk                                                                                                                                                        
  - Actively contributing to India team hiring and growth                                                

In 12 months:    
                      
  - Recognised as the technical authority for the cloud platform in India                                                                                                                                      
  - Multi-tenant and hybrid cloud architecture significantly evolved and documented                                                                                                                            
  - A set of senior engineers measurably grown in scope and impact under your mentorship 

Mandatory and Required Skills for All ThoughtSpot Roles

Spotters are expected to demonstrate AI literacy and workflow integration to include to ability to:

• Comfortably and confidently integrate artificial intelligence into their daily workflow to increase productivity and quality.

• Hands-on experience to leverage AI tools (industry-leading LLMs) to increase productivity, automate routine tasks, and improve work quality.

• Speak to the experience of using AI for research, content creation, and document summarization while maintaining ownership of judgment and final decisions.

• Write effective prompts to get the most accurate and creative results from AI tools.

Spotters are expected to exemplify these key traits and AI Mindset:

• Curiosity in exploring new AI tools

• Adaptability to quickly learn and implement new, emerging AI technologies

• Critical thinking to know when to identify when AI should be used versus when human judgement is necessary

This combination of curiosity, adaptability, and discernment defines the AI mindset, and it’s required for every role at ThoughtSpot.

AI Mindset for All Spotters

At ThoughtSpot, we believe AI is a necessary and essential part of how we work. Every role, across every team, is expected to be fluent and comfortable with using AI to do their best work.

All Spotters are expected to experiment with ThoughtSpot’s AI tools (like Spotter and SpotterViz) and leading industry LLMs to streamline workflows, enhance output, and uncover new insights. Whether drafting content, analyzing data, or summarizing documents, AI is a daily partner. We value curiosity, openness to learning, and thoughtful application of AI to create real value. Training and resources are provided so every Spotter can confidently create with AI.

Hybrid Work at ThoughtSpot

Spotters assigned to an office are encouraged to experience the energy of their local office with an in-office expectation of 2-3 days per week. This approach balances the benefits of in-person collaboration and peer learning with the flexibility needed by individuals and teams.

ThoughtSpot for All

At ThoughtSpot, diverse teams build better products. Complex data problems need many perspectives, not just one. We welcome different backgrounds, identities, and experiences, and we work to create a place where everyone can be themselves and do their best work. If this role excites you and you believe you’re a strong match, we encourage you to apply.

What Makes ThoughtSpot a Great Place to Work?

ThoughtSpot is the Agentic Analytics Platform that empowers every enterprise to transform insights into action, on a mission to make the world more fact driven. We hire people with unique identities, backgrounds, and perspectives - this balance-for-the-better philosophy is key to our success. When paired with our culture of Trust, Customer Obsession, Innovation and Intensity, ThoughtSpot cultivates a respectful culture that pushes norms to create world-class products. If you’re excited by the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the business and make your mark on a truly innovative company, we invite you to read more about our mission, and apply to the role that’s right for you.

About ThoughtSpot

The world’s most innovative companies turn to ThoughtSpot’s AI-Powered Analytics to put data in the hands of everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline. With simple, natural language search and AI, anyone can ask questions, discover insights, and act with confidence. Unlike legacy tools that sacrifice performance for complexity, ThoughtSpot is intuitively designed for every business user while being built to handle the most complex, large-scale data, wherever it resides. This unique combination of speed and simplicity is why enterprise leaders trust ThoughtSpot to transform decision-making into a truly data-driven culture.

At ThoughtSpot, we’re a curious, data-driven bunch. We believe the world works better when everyone has access to facts. That’s why we build products that make asking and answering data questions as natural as having a conversation.