Software Engineer (API, SQL) Full Time NEW

Shippo is a pioneering technology company dedicated to transforming the shipping landscape of the internet. Our mission is to empower merchants worldwide by providing seamless, reliable, and scalable logistics solutions. We build the core infrastructure that connects e-commerce businesses to a vast network of global carriers through a unified API and an intuitive dashboard, enabling efficient and cost-effective shipping operations. As a remote-first organization, we embrace flexibility, diversity, and innovation, fostering a collaborative environment that spans continents, cultures, and time zones. Our commitment to modern, scalable technology ensures that our teams can develop, deploy, and refine solutions with confidence, ultimately driving success for our customers and stakeholders alike.

About The Role

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to lead our Platform Enablement organization, which includes Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Engineering Enablement (Developer Experience), and Security teams. This strategic role offers the opportunity to shape the technical vision and architecture of Shippo’s platform capabilities, ensuring consistency, security, and scalability across our infrastructure. You will be instrumental in defining multi-year technical strategies, establishing architectural guardrails, and creating standards that enable rapid yet reliable development and deployment processes. Your leadership will influence the engineering culture, mentor senior engineers, and drive organizational initiatives that enhance developer productivity, cost efficiency, and security posture. This role reports directly to the Director of Engineering and plays a critical part in accelerating our technological growth and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with expertise in platform engineering, distributed systems, or infrastructure
• Strong hands-on coding skills with the ability to develop production-quality software, prototypes, and internal tooling
• Proven experience leading multi-year, organization-wide technical initiatives in high-growth tech environments
• Deep knowledge of cloud cost optimization, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, or enhancing engineering productivity at scale
• Ability to define and implement technical strategies aligned with business goals and anticipate industry trends
• Demonstrated success in establishing engineering standards and governance frameworks that scale
• Proven mentorship skills for senior technical talent and influencing career development
• Excellent judgment in managing trade-offs between cost, security, velocity, and technical debt
• Strong communication skills, capable of articulating complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
• Comfortable working in ambiguous situations, with a focus on investigation, prototyping, and validation
• Data-driven decision-making skills and analytical mindset
• Experience fostering collaboration across product, security, and engineering leadership teams
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the multi-year technical strategy for Shippo’s platform infrastructure, developer experience, and security
• Establish architectural guardrails and governance frameworks to ensure security, reliability, and speed
• Design high-level systems addressing complex challenges in cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and security tooling
• Partner with Staff Engineers to clarify ownership, system boundaries, and operational health across teams
• Set engineering standards for infrastructure, deployment practices, and security by default
• Create organizational mechanisms such as templates, service catalogs, and automated guardrails to maintain excellence
• Drive application standards through self-service tooling and golden paths, reducing fragmentation
• Identify and eliminate systemic organizational barriers that hinder engineering velocity or cause toil
• Develop solutions that maximize organizational impact, including cost optimization, security automation, and developer productivity
• Lead early-stage investigations, prototypes, and experiments to validate approaches before scaling
• Mentor and influence the career growth of senior and staff engineers within platform teams
• Navigate complex trade-offs with broad implications, advocating for optimal decisions across the organization
• Collaborate with Security teams to embed automation and secure-by-default practices into workflows
• Drive ownership and transparency of platform service costs for product teams
• Maintain feedback loops with product teams to ensure platform capabilities address their pain points
• Conduct proactive reviews of operational and system health across platform services
• Create lasting artifacts such as documentation, frameworks, and talks to serve as organizational force multipliers
• Balance time between coding, prototyping, and designing standards and reviews (approximately 30% coding, 70% standards)

Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare coverage for medical, dental, and vision (90% covered by the company, including dependents)
• Pets coverage available
• Flexible take-as-much-as-you-need vacation policy and remote work flexibility
• One-week company-wide winter slowdown for rest and rejuvenation
• Home office setup stipend to support remote work
• Charity donation matching up to $100
• Dedicated programs, coaching, tools, and resources for professional and personal growth
• Learning stipends for continuous development
• Participation in fun team events and in-person gatherings through our Shippos Everywhere program

Equal Opportunity

We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.