Principal Software Engineer, Platform

Description

The company makes search technology that helps people find the answers they need in real time, across all their data and at scale.

This is a principal-level technical leadership role on the Global UX engineering team. The team builds and maintains the company's design system and React component library, along with the shared patterns, tokens and tooling that keep its products consistent, accessible and high quality.

The design system is the UI foundation for every major product, so the work reaches dozens of consuming teams. You will write and review code, make the difficult architecture decisions, and be the senior technical contact when a component API, theming approach or migration path needs solving.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the design system's component architecture, API design, theming, accessibility and long-term maintainability across many product teams.
• Make the hardest calls on composable component patterns, breaking changes and migrations, versioning, token design, and the trade-offs between flexibility and consistency.
• Lead the Global UX engineering team as tech lead: set standards, review designs, unblock engineers and keep their work aligned with one long-term architecture.
• Work with design leadership to turn visual direction and interaction patterns into reusable, well-documented component APIs.
• Drive adoption across the company by working with consuming teams, understanding their constraints and changing APIs and docs so adoption is easy rather than forced.
• Raise the standard for accessibility, performance and cross-browser correctness in shared UI building blocks.
• Coach engineers through code review, design critique and pairing, and help grow senior and staff-level engineers.
• Represent the team in cross-functional planning with product, design and engineering leaders, and make the case for investing in design system health and developer experience.
• Use profiling, telemetry and consumer feedback to find where the design system creates friction, and lead the work to fix it.
• Explore how AI could improve design-to-code work, such as generating components from specs, automating accessibility checks or assisting migrations, while keeping shipped components correct and high quality.

Requirements

• Deep hands-on experience building and running React and TypeScript component libraries or design systems in production, with many internal or external consumers.
• A record of technical leadership, setting architecture and quality standards that other engineers follow without formal authority.
• Experience designing composable, flexible component APIs, such as compound components, render props, headless components, and theming or token systems.
• Strong grasp of accessibility (WCAG, semantic HTML, keyboard and screen reader behavior) and a history of making it a team's default practice.
• Experience managing a widely used library through releases, breaking changes, deprecation, migration paths and documentation.
• Ability to work directly with designers and design leaders, turning visual and interaction intent into technical constraints and component contracts.
• Good judgment on when to build reusable abstractions versus one-off solutions, and the communication skills to explain those trade-offs to engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• A record of mentoring engineers and raising a team's technical level through code review, design docs and practical, hands-on leadership.
• Experience working openly in a distributed team, with clear written communication, async-first collaboration, and open-source or open development practices.
• Curiosity about how AI can improve design system workflows, paired with a firm commitment to quality and correctness in what ships.

Conditions

Compensation is base salary only, with no variable component.

The typical starting salary range is €80,400 to €127,200 EUR. The final offer within that range depends on experience, skills and expertise, fit with the role requirements, and the scope and complexity of the position. Ranges are set from external market benchmarks, internal pay equity and the responsibilities of each role.

The company is distributed, and many roles offer flexible locations and schedules.

The company's technology is subject to US and other countries' export controls and licensing rules. If you are located in or are a national of Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Russia, including the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia (Crimea, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia), an export license may be required as a condition of employment in this role. National origin or nationality does not affect eligibility for employment.

The company welcomes people with disabilities and will make accommodations during recruiting on request. Applicants have rights under US federal employment law.

Benefits

• Competitive pay based on the work you do, not your previous salary.
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations.
• Parity of benefits across regions, adapted to local regulations.
• Generous number of vacation days each year.
• The company matches financial donations and volunteer service up to $2,000 (or local currency equivalent).
• Up to 40 hours each year for volunteer projects you choose.
• At least 16 weeks of parental leave.