Principal Software Engineer (Remote)

The posting, as 8th Light wrote it

Who We Are

At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer.

Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients.

If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place.

Who You Are

You’ve shown long-term repeated success on a variety of projects, typically over the course of 10+ years. You are a trusted expert and leader, often called upon to guide ambiguous initiatives and architect scalable solutions. You bring a blend of deep consulting acumen, technical expertise, and product thinking that drives measurable and impactful outcomes. In your previous experience, you have:

• Built and shipped production-grade platforms: the reusable foundations, tools, infrastructure, and workflows that help other teams shift faster and more reliably
• Taken AI and agentic systems from prototype to production, with a strong understanding of infrastructure, authentication, and observability
• Delivered on high-stakes consulting engagements across multiple language paradigms, stacks, ecosystems, and client industries
• Built high-quality, maintainable software collaboratively, incrementally, and through an approach tailored towards the unique needs of the clients you’ve served
• Led the development and delivery of production-grade software using a variety of languages and frameworks, including but not limited to: Java, C#/.NET, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Go, Ruby, Scala, R, Rust, and SQL
• Actively experimented with AI development tools and translated that experimentation into faster, higher-quality delivery for your teams
• A track record of understanding, assessing, and embracing new tooling and trends within the software industry
• Built or integrated AI/ML features into products and systems, including recommendation engines, NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, RAG pipelines, and agents
• Successfully led modernization and replatforming efforts to align legacy systems with short and long-term business needs
• Led and delivered solutions to architecture-level problems including scalability, security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and observability
• Facilitated alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders to move initiatives forward through ambiguit

[…]
osophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs.

We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows:

• Structure 1 (Denver, Tampa Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Ohio, Wisconsin)
• RANGE: $151,535-$189,418 USD
• Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro )
• RANGE: $159,240-$199,050 USD
• Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro)
• RANGE: $169,513-$211,892 USD
• Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City)
• RANGE: $176,705- $220,881 USD

Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market.

8th Light Hubs and Geographies

As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.

If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team.

In most cases, our consulting engagements do not require travel.

We hope to see you apply!

#LI-Remote
A Note on Your Privacy

At 8th Light, one of our core values is Honesty that builds trust — and that shapes how we approach hiring. We want you to have a clear picture of who we are , what we're looking for , and how we handle your information throughout the process.

Before submitting your application, please take a moment to review our Global Candidate Privacy Notice . By applying, you acknowledge that you've read it.