Principal Software Engineer - Internal Platform

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

Pantheon is seeking a Principal Engineer to join our Internal Platform team — the group responsible for the tools, platforms, and practices that make Pantheon’s own engineers more effective. You’ll shape how engineers across the company write, test, deploy, and operate software: from CI/CD pipelines and internal developer portals to AI-assisted workflows, developer productivity metrics, and self-service tooling.

We’re looking for someone who has built internal developer platforms or developer experience programs at scale — at a software company, developer tools company, or platform engineering team — and who brings AI-native instincts to the work. At Pantheon, AI isn’t a feature we’re adding — it’s how we work. You’ll bring the same rigor to our internal engineering systems that we bring to the platform we sell, and you’ll be a force multiplier across every engineering team.

What You Need to Succeed 

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for Pantheon’s internal developer platform, including self-service tooling, CI/CD infrastructure, and developer enablement programs that reduce friction across the engineering organization.
• Architect, build, and evolve core developer experience systems — including internal developer portals, standardized service templates, observability tooling, and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Define and own Pantheon’s developer productivity metrics strategy — selecting and evolving frameworks (DORA, SPACE) to measure engineering effectiveness, and translating insights into clear recommendations for engineering leadership.
• Partner with engineering teams to identify high-friction areas in the software delivery lifecycle and design iterative, high-impact solutions that measurably improve developer flow and satisfaction.
• Lead adoption of AI-powered developer tooling across the engineering organization — evaluating tools, establishing standards, measuring impact, and driving cultural change toward AI-first workflows.
• Provide technical leadership across the engineering organization — setting direction, reviewing designs, and raising the bar for quality, reliability, and developer experience.
• Mentor and coach engineers at all levels, providing technical guidance and growing engineering talent across the broader organization.
• Contribute to an engineering-wide culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and developer empathy.

What You Bring to the Table

Experience

• 10+ years of software development experience, with significant tenure building platform engineering, developer experience, or developer productivity products
• 5+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems and developer tooling
• Demonstrated ability to drive measurable improvements in developer productivity and satisfaction across a large engineering organization
• Experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or similar), and infrastructure-as-code practices
• Proficiency in Go, Python, TypeScript, or equivalent modern languages
• Demonstrated executive presence, with a track record of translating complex technical and data concepts into clear narratives for senior engineering leadership

Technical Depth

• Deep expertise in internal developer platform (IDP) design and implementation — including self-service infrastructure, service catalogs, golden path templates, and developer portals
• Experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines and software delivery infrastructure at scale — including build systems, test automation, deployment tooling, and release processes
• Strong understanding of developer productivity measurement — including DORA metrics, SPACE framework, flow metrics, and the ability to instrument, analyze, and act on engineering effectiveness data
• Hands-on experience with AI developer tooling (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) — including evaluating adoption, measuring impact on developer workflows, and governing responsible use at scale
• Proficiency with observability, platform telemetry, and developer experience analytics — integrating signals from Git, CI/CD, incident management, and AI tooling into coherent productivity insights
• Grounding in SRE and production engineering fundamentals — including SLOs, error budgets, toil reduction, and incident response — and an understanding of how reliability principles inform the design of resilient, operationally sound developer platforms
• AI-native engineering practices — including fluency with AI coding assistants and a track record of integrating AI tools into engineering workflows, automation, and architectural decision-making
• Familiarity with agentic and LLM-powered developer tools — including AI code review, PR assistants, automated testing, and developer-facing AI interfaces

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.

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The US base salary range for this position in the United States is $187,200 - $234,000 USD per year. 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.