Job Requisition ID #
Position Overview As a global leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, Autodesk helps people imagine, design and create a better world. Autodesk accelerates better design through an unparalleled depth of experience and a broad portfolio of software to give customers the power to solve their design, business, and environmental challenges. In addition to designers, architects, engineers, and media and entertainment professionals, Autodesk helps students, educators, and casual creators unlock their creative ideas through user-friendly applications.
Autodesk’s Digital Experience Engineering team builds the platforms behind the digital experiences that millions of customers use worldwide. We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to provide deep technical leadership on a large-scale data platform, and to turn complex requirements into a coherent, scalable architecture.
As a Principal Engineer, you will be a recognized technical expert on distributed systems, data pipelines, and high-throughput services in the cloud. You will own architecture decisions that span multiple systems and teams. You will partner with product, architecture, and engineering groups to shape the platform roadmap. You will report to a Software Development Manager and this is a hybrid work mode.
Responsibilities
- Set the technical direction for core platform subsystems and drive architectural alignment across teams and codebases.
- Turn ambiguous product and partner requirements into concrete platform capabilities, and document the tradeoffs for engineering and product leadership.
- Design and review complex changes to distributed services and data models, with attention to correctness, concurrency, and data integrity.
- Lead cross-team initiatives, and identify and resolve systemic issues in reliability, performance, and developer productivity.
- Establish and evolve engineering standards, and coach engineers across teams to adopt them Partner with senior leaders, architects, DevOps, Support, and product organizations on platform strategy, capacity planning, and incident response.
- Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and architecture deep dives.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of professional software development experience, including significant time designing and operating distributed backend systems in production.
- Strong proficiency in a modern backend language, and experience building libraries or frameworks used by other engineering teams.
- Experience designing and operating asynchronous or workflow-based systems at production scale.
- Strong experience with a major public cloud platform, including serverless compute, NoSQL storage, object storage, and event-driven integration.
- Expertise in API design and implementation, including schema validation, versioning, and backwards compatibility.
- Demonstrated ability to design data models and to drive system behavior from configuration.
- Track record of leading architecture across multiple teams, and of influencing technical direction through written design documents.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with ETL or data pipeline platforms that ingest, transform, and deliver data at scale.
- Strong data management background, including schema design, versioning, and data quality.
- Experience with extensible integration patterns, such as plugin or connector frameworks for heterogeneous sources.
- Background in developer experience and platform tooling.
- Experience operating regulated or multi-region environments.
- Exposure to AI/ML-driven workflows, such as embeddings, search relevance, or data enrichment.
Learn More
About Autodesk
Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.
We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.
When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!
Benefits
From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/
Salary transparency
Equal Employment Opportunity
At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.
Belonging
We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/global-belonging
In-Person Onboarding and Identity Verification
This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.
Are you an existing contractor or consultant with Autodesk?
Please search for open jobs and apply internally (not on this external site).
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent experience
- 8+ years of professional software development experience
- Deep proficiency in Python
- Hands-on experience designing workflow orchestration systems at production scale
- Strong expertise with AWS services like Lambda and DynamoDB
- Expertise in REST API design and implementation
- Track record of leading architecture and design across multiple teams
Autodesk Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Autodesk and has not been reviewed or approved by Autodesk.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away is considered expansive, combining discretionary time off for salaried roles, company holidays/Autodays, and a periodic paid sabbatical. These options provide flexibility beyond standard accrual-based PTO.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Total rewards prominently include RSUs and an employee stock purchase plan with a discount and lookback, alongside annual bonus or commission programs. These elements are available to eligible employees and can materially augment base pay.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-building support includes reimbursement for adoption, surrogacy, IVF/co‑maternity, and fertility benefits, plus dedicated coaching and Cleo resources for parenting and caregiving. These services extend support before, during, and after leave.
Autodesk Insights
What We Do
Autodesk makes software for people who make things. If you’ve ever driven a high-performance car, admired a towering skyscraper, used a smartphone, or watched a great film, chances are you’ve experienced what millions of Autodesk customers are doing with our software. Autodesk gives you the power to make anything. Over 100 million people use Autodesk software like AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, 3ds Max, Fusion 360, SketchBook, and more to unlock their creativity and solve important design, business and environmental challenges. Our software runs on both personal computers and mobile devices and taps the infinite computing power of the cloud to help teams around the world collaborate, design, simulate and fabricate their ideas in 3D. We provide exceptional compensation/benefit packages and we’d love for you to join us. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and we consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, disability, veteran status or other protected category. To see our culture in action, check out #AutodeskLife. We are headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and have more than 10,000 employees worldwide.
Why Work With Us
Our work is impactful. Our people are innovative. And our culture is inclusive. As our software shapes new solutions to the world’s biggest challenges, you shape your career path. With us, you lead the way in achieving sustainability, resilient communities, and an equitable workforce. Discover #AutodeskLife.
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