[Remote] Principal Software Engineer, AI & Platform
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Koala Health is focused on making pet health management simple and delightful. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as a technical leader across the engineering organization, responsible for architecting systems, raising engineering quality, and mentoring engineers while driving the adoption of AI in software development.
Responsibilities
- Define and evolve architectural standards across customer-facing and operational systems
- Lead the design of complex software systems, integrations, workflows, and data models
- Drive long-term technical strategy while balancing short-term business priorities
- Identify technical risks and opportunities early and develop pragmatic plans to address them
- Lead architectural reviews and guide major technical decisions across teams
- Establish patterns that improve reliability, maintainability, scalability, and developer productivity
- Champion AI-assisted software development across the organization
- Define best practices for leveraging LLMs in coding, testing, debugging, documentation, code review, and operational workflows
- Design and build agentic systems that automate engineering and business processes
- Evaluate emerging AI technologies and determine where they can create measurable value
- Help iterate on Koala's approach to AI-enabled software development and organizational productivity
- Ensure AI systems are implemented responsibly, securely, and with appropriate operational safeguards
- Raise the bar for code quality, testing, documentation, and operational readiness
- Drive improvements in CI/CD, deployment safety, developer experience, and engineering workflows
- Establish standards for observability, monitoring, alerting, and incident response
- Introduce tooling and automation that improve engineering velocity without sacrificing quality
- Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and technical excellence
- Partner closely with Product, Operations, Pharmacy, Customer Care, Growth, and Finance teams to understand business challenges and design effective solutions
- Translate ambiguous business requirements into scalable technical approaches
- Lead initiatives from concept through implementation, rollout, and operational support
- Ensure technical decisions align with company goals and customer outcomes
- Help mentor engineers across all experience levels
- Provide thoughtful guidance through design reviews, architecture discussions, and code reviews
- Help develop engineering processes that scale as the organization grows
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor to cross-functional stakeholders
- Influence engineering culture through technical leadership rather than organizational authority
Skills
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating complex, production-scale systems
- Expert-level Ruby on Rails experience with strong knowledge of modern web application architecture, distributed systems, APIs, data modeling, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Proven experience leading technical architecture, driving engineering direction, mentoring engineers, and delivering reliable, observable, high-performing systems
- Strong product and business judgment with excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Deep expertise with modern AI development, including LLMs, AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude, Codex, GitHub Copilot), and building AI-powered products, agents, automation, or developer workflows
- Understanding of agent architectures, retrieval systems, tool-calling, evaluation frameworks, and AI system reliability, with a demonstrated ability to use AI to improve engineering velocity and team effectiveness
- Authorization to work in the United States (Koala is not able to sponsor visas for this role)
- Experience in healthcare, pharmacy, veterinary, or other regulated industries
- Experience in high-volume eCommerce, subscription businesses, logistics, or operations-heavy environments
- Experience with event-driven architectures, workflow orchestration systems, and asynchronous processing
- Experience leading platform engineering, infrastructure, or developer productivity initiatives
- Familiarity with AI evaluation, observability, governance, and operational best practices
Benefits
- Remote-first culture built on flexibility and trust
- Competitive base salary with performance-based incentives
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance with partial dependent coverage
- Generous PTO and a 401(k) plan
- Supportive, close-knit team that celebrates wins and learns fast
Company Overview