Principal Systems Development Engineer

At Model N, we are seeking a Principal Systems Development Engineer to drive the vision and execution of our long-term technical strategy. In this highly influential and senior role, you will be responsible for shaping the direction of our cloud infrastructure, driving innovation in our systems, and ensuring that our engineering practices are aligned with the company’s strategic goals.

As a Principal Systems Development Engineer, you will work at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and engineering leadership. You’ll guide the design and implementation of large-scale systems, mentor engineering leaders, and lead cross-functional technical initiatives that impact the entire company. Your role will focus on driving the next generation of infrastructure and tooling at Model N, ensuring scalability, performance, and resilience across all teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape and Lead the Long-Term Technical Vision
• - Define and lead the vision for Model N’s cloud infrastructure, serverless architectures, and automation platforms, ensuring alignment with business objectives, emerging industry trends, and evolving customer needs.
• Set the architectural direction for complex, cross-functional projects, ensuring that infrastructure and system designs meet long-term scalability, security, and performance requirements.
• Provide strategic guidance on high-level technical decisions, shaping the future of the company’s technology stack and its ability to deliver innovative, customer-focused solutions.
• Lead Cross-Functional Innovation and Transformation
• Drive large-scale innovation initiatives that transform Model N’s systems, architectures, and processes across engineering, product, and business teams.
• Lead the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, frameworks, and methodologies (e.g., serverless computing, microservices architectures, distributed systems), setting new standards and ensuring Model N remains at the forefront of cloud-native engineering.
• Act as the key decision-maker in evolving and optimizing critical system components that have a long-lasting impact on the company’s infrastructure and customer offerings.
• Drive Company-Wide Technical Strategy
• Develop and implement company-wide technical roadmaps that support the business’s growth, ensuring that infrastructure and systems can scale efficiently and securely.
• Collaborate with senior leadership and other Principal Engineers to align the technical strategy with the company’s business goals, ensuring cohesion between the engineering and business teams.
• Lead large-scale, cross-team efforts to resolve architectural challenges, optimize system performance, and address key technological and operational gaps.
• Elevate Engineering Practices and Culture
• Drive the evolution of engineering culture at Model N, promoting best practices in DevOps, CI/CD, automation, and cloud infrastructure across teams.
• Champion a culture of technical excellence by influencing the way teams approach architecture, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Mentor senior engineers, engineering managers, and technical leaders, providing guidance on career development, technical challenges, and high-level architectural decisions.
• Lead initiatives that foster collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation across all levels of the organization.
• Own System Reliability, Scalability, and Performance
• Lead the design and implementation of resilient, highly available systems that can scale globally to meet the demands of Model N’s growing customer base.
• Develop strategies for performance optimization, ensuring that systems can handle high-throughput, low-latency workloads while remaining cost-effective.
• Oversee the creation of robust monitoring, observability, and disaster recovery strategies to ensure operational resilience and customer satisfaction.
• Influence the Future of Cloud-Native Technologies
• Set the direction for the adoption and evolution of cloud-native technologies, serverless computing, and microservices architectures across Model N’s product and infrastructure teams.
• Drive key architectural decisions related to cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and serverless technologies (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions), ensuring that the company can scale efficiently and securely in a multi-cloud environment.
• Play a key role in evolving Model N’s cloud-native platform and distributed system architecture, ensuring systems are optimized for high availability, cost-efficiency, and security.
• Provide Thought Leadership Across the Industry
• Serve as a thought leader in the industry by staying ahead of emerging trends in cloud infrastructure, serverless technologies, and DevOps practices, and actively contributing to industry forums, conferences, and internal training programs.
• Collaborate with external partners, vendors, and open-source communities to influence the direction of the technologies Model N uses and advocates.
• Drive Long-Term Infrastructure and Product Evolution
• Guide long-term product and infrastructure evolution, ensuring that technical debt is minimized and that scalability, reliability, and security are prioritized in all systems.
• Collaborate with product teams to ensure that infrastructure decisions align with product roadmaps, anticipating future needs and scaling to meet evolving requirements.

• Mastery of Cloud Infrastructure, Serverless Architectures, and Distributed Systems
• Extensive experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, with a deep understanding of serverless architectures (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions).
• Proven expertise in building cloud-native platforms, microservices architectures, and distributed systems that support large-scale, high-traffic applications.
• Advanced knowledge of performance optimization, high-availability design, and fault-tolerant architectures.
• Leadership in Shaping Strategic Technical Decisions
• Significant experience in shaping and leading company-wide technical strategies that align with business goals, ensuring technology enables and accelerates business outcomes.
• Ability to influence senior leadership, stakeholders, and external partners on key architectural decisions and emerging technologies.
• Expertise in leading large-scale, cross-functional projects, driving alignment across multiple teams, and delivering high-impact results.
• Strong Mentorship and Engineering Leadership
• Proven track record of mentoring senior engineers, engineering managers, and technical leaders to grow both their technical and leadership skills.
• Ability to build and maintain a culture of innovation, technical excellence, and collaboration within and across engineering teams.
• Strong experience in leading and evolving engineering processes, fostering an environment of continuous improvement and high-quality delivery.
• Expertise in DevOps, CI/CD, and Infrastructure Automation
• Expertise in DevOps practices, continuous integration (CI), and continuous deployment (CD), with experience using tools like Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, and AWS SAM.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), configuration management, and automating workflows in cloud environments.
• Outstanding Communication and Influence
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior executives.
• Experience in influencing technical direction at the highest levels of the organization and contributing to the creation of a company-wide engineering roadmap.
• Education and Certifications
• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, or equivalent.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), or other advanced certifications are a plus.

At Model N we offer fair, equitable and competitive salary ranges for all positions. Compensation varies depending on factors that may include a candidate’s relevant experience, education and/or certifications, location, training, and other skills. Positions are eligible to participate in either our employee bonus program or commission payments, depending on the nature of the role.

Additionally, Model N offers a robust total rewards package that supports individuals to be their best and protects the well-being of participating dependents. Such benefits include medical, dental, vision, health savings, flexible savings, commuter benefits, matching 401K, PTO, VTO, life insurance, pet insurance, employee assistance programs, mental health programs, charitable giving, coaching, career growth and much more. 

The base salary for this position will be $135,000 - $165,000.  If your salary expectations are outside of this range, feel free to apply and discuss your expectations with our recruiters.  We are constantly opening up new positions and you might match another opening at a different level.  

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