Principal Software Engineer, Collaborative Web Platform

The posting, as Pantheon Systems, Inc wrote it

About Pantheon

Pantheon brings together exceptional builders who take ownership, drive meaningful impact, and shape what's next for the web. We power more than 300,000 websites globally for organizations including Google, Princeton, Salesloft, Clorox, and the United Nations. Every day, thousands of developers and marketers use our WebOps platform to build, iterate, and scale WordPress, Drupal, and Next.js sites that reach billions of people worldwide. As an employer, we operate with the same philosophy that drives our product: foundation and freedom. Pantheon is a vibrant, remote-forward team of experts who care deeply about their craft and results. Here, you take ownership of work that matters, contribute alongside exceptional people, and see the impact you create.

The Role

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership and help define engineering strategy and best practices across Pantheon.

Our Collaborative Web Platform is a zero-to-one product at the intersection of real-time collaboration, visual editing, web application infrastructure, developer experience, AI-assisted workflows, content management, and governed publishing. The product must make it possible for multiple roles—and increasingly, AI agents—to work in parallel without compromising reliability, security, accessibility, brand standards, or the live site.

This is a high-leverage individual contributor role. You will remain hands-on while operating across product and organizational boundaries: shaping architecture, resolving the hardest technical decisions, establishing engineering standards, and helping teams build a production-ready platform that can evolve safely.

What You Will Do

Define technical direction

• Own and evolve the architectural vision across real-time collaboration, branch-aware content state, APIs, data models, visual editing, publishing, integrations, and developer-facing extension points.
• Establish clear architectural boundaries between our collaborative web platform, Pantheon’s hosting and platform capabilities, and external systems.
• Make pragmatic build-versus-buy and platform-boundary decisions using explicit criteria for customer value, reliability, security, operational complexity, developer experience, and total cost of ownership.
• Identify architectural risks early, make tradeoffs explicit, and ensure decisions are documented, communicated, and revisited when evidence changes.
• Create an architecture that supports fast MVP delivery without locking the company into avoidable long-term constraints.

Drive company-wide engineering strategy

• Partner with engineering, product, design, security, infrastructure, support, and go-to-market leaders to define technical strategy for capabilities that span multiple organizations.
• Translate company and product goals into a coherent engineering strategy, including sequencing, investment areas, platform responsibilities, and measurable outcomes.
• Help establish commo

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What We Offer

We have all the usual perks and benefits but what we can really offer you is a fantastic work environment powered by an amazing team.

• Industry competitive compensation and equity plan
• Flexible time off, sick days, and 13 paid holidays
• Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision
• Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
• In-office workspace (San Francisco & Chicago)
• Monthly allowance for wellness, reading and access to LinkedIn Learning for continued development
• Events and activities both team-based and company wide that inspire, educate and cultivate

Pantheon is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by law. Pantheon complies with federal and local disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation due to a disability for any part of the interview process, please contact talent@pantheon.io. Pursuant to local and federal regulations, Pantheon will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.

After an offer is made and accepted, E-verify will be utilized to establish your identity and employment eligibility as required by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

To review the Employee and Applicant's Privacy Policy, click here .

The US base salary range for this position in the United States is $198,900-$248,625. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. At Pantheon, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.

Visa Sponsorship is not available at this time.