Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code – testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this “outer loop,” helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle.
Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform.
Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend — enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency.
With a global team across 26 offices and 25 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.
Position Summary
The Harness Engineering team is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead complex cross platform initiatives and lead technical projects across geographies. Principal Engineers are recognized experts in Harness’ technology domain, and represent the senior technical leadership within their organization. Principal Engineers carry the responsibility of steering the course for their organizational segment, partnering with senior leadership, prioritizing initiatives to achieve a range of objectives.
Principal Engineers at HarnessPoses a careful blend of domain specific engineering expertise and world class technical leadership. There are a number of competencies that a Principal Engineer must display.
- Technical Competencies
- In depth tactical knowledge of the domain, yet broad experience and skill sets
- Domain and product expert when representing harness with customers and internal teams alike.
- Seamlessly include, promote and balance cross functional inputs from Product, Design, Enablement
- Break down complex technical requirements to motivate and lead cross-functional teams
- Consider the execution needed today, into the future, make investments aligned with broader impact
- Leadership Competencies
- Demonstrable experience in executing on one, or multiple roadmap through working with others, finding the ROI in organized efforts
- Subject matter and domain expertise applied to develop others internal and external to Harness
- In depth understanding of product features and roadmaps, how customers engage with the product in your space
- Clear displays of improving execution via process optimization, or other means
- Natural advisor to leadership on resourcing constraints, efficiencies.
- Practice and evangelize Harness core values
- Participate and contribute to Architecture Committees, Hiring Committees, and others that are formed to solve issues across the org, and company
- Driving end to end, design and implementation of features
- Design, develop, and maintain integrations with multiple AI and cloud systems like Google Vertex AI, Azure, AWS and OpenAI
- Build Gen AI based Agentic architecture for a first class AI enabled user experience
- Use Prompt engineering techniques to leverage the best LLM models
- Collaborate with product management, engineering teams and Machine learning engineers for requirements through to delivery
- Design and implement scalable AI services
- 10+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- Knowledge of object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
- Deep hands-on technical expertise in at least one major technical area: Modern Software Delivery, building complex distributed systems
- 8+ years of experience developing backend systems
- 6+ years of experience in Python with some knowledge of JavaScript (preferably Typescript)
- Experience in RestAPIs, RPC, Deploying services
- Experience in data modeling using NoSQL systems like MongoDB or SQL systems like MySQL, Postgres, etc.
- Bachelor's degree, CS preferred, or equivalent professional experience
- Experience working AWS to build scalable applications
- Preference for candidates with experience in:.
- This position is a hybrid role that will require the person to work from our Bangalore Office 3 days a week.
What You Will Have at Harness
- Experience building a transformative product
- End-to-end ownership of your projects
- Competitive salary
- Comprehensive healthcare benefit
- Flexible work schedule
- Quarterly Harness TGIF-Off / 4 days
- Paid Time Off and Parental Leave
- Monthly, quarterly, and annual social and team building events
- Monthly internet reimbursement
- Accelerating Our Mission to Bring AI to Everything After Code
- Goldman Sachs leads investment in software delivery startup Harness at $5.5 billion valuation
- How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal
- Harness Research Shows AI Visibility Crisis Fueling Security Nightmare
- Harness has been named to the Inc. Power Partner list for software delivery success
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Note on Fraudulent Recruiting/Offers
We have become aware that there may be fraudulent recruiting attempts being made by people posing as representatives of Harness. These scams may involve fake job postings, unsolicited emails, or messages claiming to be from our recruiters or hiring managers.
Please note, we do not ask for sensitive or financial information via chat, text, or social media, and any email communications will come from the domain @harness.io. Additionally, Harness will never ask for any payment, fee to be paid, or purchases to be made by a job applicant. All applicants are encouraged to apply directly to our open jobs via our website. Interviews are generally conducted via Zoom video conference unless the candidate requests other accommodations.
If you believe that you have been the target of an interview/offer scam by someone posing as a representative of Harness, please do not provide any personal or financial information and contact us immediately at [email protected]. You can also find additional information about this type of scam and report any fraudulent employment offers via the Federal Trade Commission’s website (https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams), or you can contact your local law enforcement agency.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- Knowledge of object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
- Deep hands-on technical expertise in at least one major technical area
- Demonstrable experience in advanced Java, Golang, or comparable programming languages.
- Depth of experience in distributed systems
- Advanced Computer Science degree, or equivalent experience
Harness Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Harness and has not been reviewed or approved by Harness.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered competitive across many roles, with engineering noted as particularly strong. Feedback suggests role-level compensation details for sales are relatively visible, aiding clarity around base and OTE.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Programs like flexible PTO, parental leave, periodic company-wide Fridays off, and a dedicated Recharge & Reset benefit expand time-away options. Feedback suggests these cadence-based days help employees meaningfully disconnect.
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Healthcare Strength — Core medical, dental, and vision coverage is highlighted alongside an Employee Assistance Program and wellness initiatives. Mental health and wellbeing support complement the primary plans.
Harness Insights
What We Do
Harness is a leader in AI-native software delivery, dedicated to empowering developers and engineering teams worldwide. We revolutionize how software is built, tested, deployed, and optimized by driving efficiency, reliability, and speed throughout the software development lifecycle. At Harness, we envision a world where developers focus on innovation, free from repetitive tasks, supported by tools that streamline every step. Our platform leverages AI and automation across all key pillars of software delivery: Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Feature Flags and Experimentation, Cloud Cost Management, Security Testing, and more. By automating traditionally manual processes that slow down engineering teams, Harness enables organizations to release software faster, reduce errors, and optimize costs—all while enhancing the developer experience and flexibility. Harness is transforming software delivery on a global scale. As a pioneer in AI-driven automation, we streamline complex development processes, eliminate inefficiencies, and empower developers to innovate freely. Our mission is ambitious: enabling millions of developers to deliver code faster, more reliably, and with greater ease than ever before.
Why Work With Us
Harness is built on a culture of growth, collaboration, and transparency, where team members are encouraged to push boundaries and solve meaningful challenges. We invest in personal and professional development, value work-life balance, and foster a supportive environment—making Harness an ideal place to make a real impact in tech.
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