Principal Software Engineer

At Qualtrics, we create software the world’s best brands use to deliver exceptional frontline experiences, build high-performing teams, and design products people love. But we are more than a platform—we are the creators and stewards of the Experience Management category serving over 18K clients globally. Building a category takes grit, determination, and a disdain for convention—but most of all it requires close-knit, high-functioning teams with an unwavering dedication to serving our customers.

When you join one of our teams, you’ll be part of a nimble group that’s empowered to set aggressive goals and move fast to achieve them. Strategic risks are encouraged and complex problems are solved together, by passing the mic and iterating until the best solution comes to light. You won’t have to look to find growth opportunities—ready or not, they’ll find you. From retail to government to healthcare, we’re on a mission to bring humanity, connection, and empathy back to business. Join over 5,000 people across the globe who think that’s work worth doing.

Principal Software Engineer

Why We Have This Role

As a Principal Engineer for Qualtrics, you will be responsible for owning and delivering complex programs, spearheading investments, and defining the future technical vision. You will contribute substantially to initiatives such as the development of innovative new products, services, and features for our XM Platform. You will bring proven platform and system-level development skills to help advance the latest AI platform investments being built out at Qualtrics.

• Serve as a technical lead on our most demanding, multi-functional projects.
• Ensure the quality of component architecture and system designs.
• Influence and drive the architecture of major technology areas within the company.
• Contribute intellectual property through patent generation.
• Functionally decompose complex problems into simple, straight-forward solutions.
• Fully understand system interdependencies and limitations.
• Demonstrate expert knowledge in performance, scalability, enterprise system architecture, and exhibit and teach engineering standard methodologies.
• Effectively research and benchmark Qualtrics’ technology against other best-in-class technologies and participate in technology adoption decisions.
• Assist in the career development of others, actively mentoring individuals on advanced technical issues and helping managers guide the career growth of their team members.
• Exert technical influence over multiple teams, growing their productivity and effectiveness by sharing your deep knowledge and experience.

How You’ll Grow

• Develop leadership skills by taking ownership of critical, high-impact projects and influencing architecture decisions across multiple teams and technology domains.
• Expand technical expertise by working hands-on with cutting-edge, large-scale distributed systems and evolving your knowledge in performance, scalability, and enterprise system design.
• Build cross-functional collaboration abilities by identifying common technology challenges and driving integrated solutions that align with business needs without sacrificing agility.
• Enhance mentoring and coaching capabilities by guiding less experienced engineers and partnering with managers to foster the professional growth of the broader engineering organization.
• Engage with company-wide strategic initiatives and technology adoption processes, contributing intellectual property and shaping the future direction of Qualtrics’ technology landscape.
• Fully engage with the latest AI/ML trend and development inside and outside the company to help establish world-class AI capabilities at Qualtrics.

Things You’ll Do

• You will work with individual teams to ensure that all systems can scale to meet the ever-increasing demands of our rapidly growing business.
• You will identify and pursue opportunities to integrate technical solutions across all Qualtrics teams. You will also be expected to dedicatedly identify common problem spaces across teams and ensure we build best-in-class solutions to meet our customers’ needs without impeding the agility of individual business verticals.
• You will help drive the direction and development of a premier technology organization and be at the center of all key system level decisions.
• You will lead and engage in design reviews, architectural discussions, requirements definitions and other technical activities as a leader within Qualtrics. You’ll have the opportunity to work on our most complex problems.
• You will also give to the health of our engineering culture. You are a pragmatic visionary who can translate business needs into workable technology solutions. Your expertise is deep and broad; you’re hands on, capable of producing both detailed technical work and high-level architectural designs.

What We’re Looking For On Your Resume

• Minimum of a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science or related field
• 12+ years of relevant, broad engineering experience
• Consistent track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, high-quality SaaS systems
• Deep hands-on technical expertise in at least one major technical area: large scale Unix systems engineering, building complex distributed systems, building monitoring or management tools for large-scale environments.
• Experience leading complex projects, with significant bottom-line impact
• Experience leading development of process and standard processes
• Experience with Agile Management (SCRUM, RUP, XP), Data Modeling, API design, Containerization, Networking, UNIX, and database or other storage and compute related projects
• Experience mentoring/training an engineering community on complex technical issues
• Experience working in a complex, service oriented software development.
• Experience with AI-assisted software development.

What You Should Know About This Team

• The Qualtrics Technology and Architecture Project (QTAP) team tackles the highest impact technical challenges across Engineering.
• The QTAP team owns the North Star architecture vision and tracks the overall architecture direction and trends across all of Qualtrics Engineering.
• The QTAP team members are given a high level of autonomy and responsibility to uncover architectural problems below the surface and proactively address them.
• The QTAP team consists of a small number of highly flexible principal-level engineers who can quickly delve into new technical areas and make a difference.
• The QTAP team members are expected to solve problems while enforcing collaborative and rigorous engineering culture.

Our Team’s Favorite Perks and Benefits

• Wellness Reimbursement for $300 per quarter for wellness activities, including gym memberships, spa massages, workout equipment, meditation apps, and much more.
• $1800 yearly Experience bonus to be used for an “Experience” of your choosing
• Amazing QGroup Communities; MOSAIQ, Green Team, Qualtrics Pride, Q&Able, Qualtrics Salute, and Women’s Leadership Development, which exist as places for support, allyship, and advocacy.