The ideal candidate thrives in an innovative, fast-paced environment and is collaborative, accountable, ready, and empathetic. We're looking for individuals who believe they can accomplish more as a team and create lasting growth for themselves and others. We hire based on attitude, competency, and commitment. Solarians are ready to advance our world-class solutions in a fast-paced environment and accept the challenge to lead with purpose. If you're looking to build your career with an exceptional team, you've come to the right place. Join SolarWinds and grow with us!

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as the architectural leader for the Service Desk product. This role is intended for a senior individual contributor who can define technical vision across multiple teams, drive major architectural decisions, and lead the design and implementation of complex initiatives that span frontend, backend, platform, and data layers.
The ideal candidate is deeply proficient in Ruby on Rails, AWS cloud architecture and services, modern frontend and backend system design, relational databases such as MySQL, Elasticsearch, and data architecture. They should be comfortable working in ambiguous problem spaces, influencing product and engineering direction, and turning complex business and customer needs into scalable, secure, and maintainable systems.

Key Responsibilities
. Own and evolve the technical architecture for the Service Desk product across application, platform and data domains.
. Set technical vision and strategy for areas that span multiple teams and services, and drive technical decisions that have broad product impact.
. Architect, lead, and help implement major initiatives, including large feature investments, platform changes, and technology modernization efforts. Stay hands-on in critical code paths across our Ruby on Rails and Python services.
. Provide architectural leadership for cloud-native solutions on AWS, including application services, data services, observability, security, and operational resilience.
. Define and guide data architecture decisions, including service-to-database boundaries, schema evolution, indexing strategies, data access patterns, and search architecture across MySQL and Elasticsearch.
. Influence product requirements and engineering plans in partnership with Product Management, helping shape solutions that are technically sound and aligned with customer needs.
. Contribute actively to architecture reviews and serve as a trusted technical leader across teams.
. Raise the bar on engineering quality, security, and system design practices, including secure-by-design thinking and high standards for production readiness.
. Champion third-party-first and API-contract-driven engineering practices where appropriate across the product and platform ecosystem.
. Mentor senior and staff engineers, helping scale architectural thinking and technical decision-making across the organization.

Qualifications
. Bachelor's degree with 15+ years of industry experience, or Master's degree with 13+ years of industry experience.
. Proven experience as a Principal Engineer, Architect, or senior technical leader for complex SaaS or enterprise software products.
. Strong proficiency in Ruby on Rails and deep experience building and scaling backend services in production.
. Strong experience architecting and delivering complex features across both backend and frontend layers.
. Strong hands-on experience with AWS cloud architecture and services, including designing reliable, scalable, and secure distributed systems.
. Experience with LLM frameworks or modern AI tooling
. Deep knowledge of relational databases, especially MySQL, including schema design, performance tuning, and operational considerations.
. Experience working across multiple teams and influencing architecture beyond a single codebase or service boundary.
. Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical direction clearly to engineers, product managers, and leadership.
. Experience in ITSM, Service Desk, workflow, ticketing, or operational SaaS products is a plus.

SolarWinds is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. SolarWinds will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

All applications are treated in accordance with the SolarWinds Privacy Notice:

Principal Engineer – SolarWinds Service Desk