Principal software engineer

What You Will Do:

Set the technical bar for a team; lead the design and scope of complex software features into well-defined implementation plans, leveraging AI-assisted development workflows to accelerate delivery while maintaining engineering rigor.

Guide and direct AI agents through feature development, serving as the primary architect, reviewer, and decision-maker to frame the problem, set constraints and make the calls that ensure solutions are aligned with business requirements and technical standards.

Build effective scaffolding that enables AI tools to generate high-quality, maintainable, and scalable code, project context management, reusable skills, agent workflows, prompt frameworks and automated quality checks.

Drive comprehensive automated testing and verification practices for every feature before release, ensuring unit tests and validation scenarios are tied back to the requirements.

Own the quality of all delivered software by rigorously reviewing AI-generated output, challenging assumptions, finding the gaps, and validating that solution fully resolves the problem.

Identify and mitigate risks associated with AI-assisted development, ensuring generated solutions meet expectations for security, maintainability, correctness, and long-term sustainability.

Continuously raise the team capabilities in AI-driven engineering by improving workflows, tooling, agents and best practices other engineers depend on for quality outcomes.

Create clarity for a team in undefined territory by framing the problem, setting constraints, and giving others a workable starting point where no pattern exists.

Makes the complex clear for technical and non-technical audiences, facilitates healthy disagreements, and consult with others on technical input before making a group decision.

Create and maintain documentation of features, design decisions, configurations, and other key technical areas of the application.

Lead the collaboration with other developers, QA engineers, designers, and product experts in a cross-functional scrum team.

Accountable for the team’s delivery, pace and quality by scoping and staging work across team members and representing them in cross-functional meetings.

Define scope and estimation for proposed features leading to accurate cost and timeline estimates.

Propose, prototype, and champion technologies and processes that continuously help Skillable advance integration solutions.

Mentor team members and establish standards by developing talent, resolving technical friction, and communicating direction to create team alignment. Establish quality development patterns and practices, ensuring the team adheres to these standards.

Propose alternate designs that improve time-to-market or reduce cost or complexity.

Explore and recommend new technologies, patterns, and methods to accomplish items on the technical and product roadmap.

Recommend standards and best practices for non-functional requirements such as system performance, usability, reliability, adaptability, security, legal and other operational aspect.

Participate in team on-call rotation during evenings, weekends, or holidays for emergency support or special events.

Consistently review work to ensure quality, avoiding errors and maintaining high standards.

Contribute to interviewing and selecting new team members.

Support and promote the company values through positive interactions with both internal and external stakeholders on a regular basis.

Other strategic business initiatives or special cross-functional project involvement as required.

What You Bring to the Role:

Bachelor’s degree in related field (computer software, computer science, software development, etc.) or equivalent work experience.

15+ years of professional experience as a software developer in an agile product team.

10+ years working with .NET Framework and C# required, AND Typescript or JavaScript required.

1+ years of professional work experience in a lead position or unofficially leading cross-functional projects.

Experience working with hands-on technical training environments, virtual labs, or learning platforms is highly desirable.

Experience mentoring and developing team members officially or unofficially, as well as promoting best practices and standards within a department and industry.

Hands on experience delegating real implementation work to AI agents and reviewing and verifying what comes back for delegated engineering, not autocomplete.

Proven experience regularly use of modern AI tools/agent tools including GitHub CoPilot and Claude Code or similar as a standard practice in building software that is not experimental.

Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging and code review so AI raises the bar for, supporting existing coding skills.

Evidence of building scaffolding around AI tools: custom agents, MCP servers, eval harnesses or enablement that made AI work more efficiently for a team or department, strongly preferred.

Exceptional judgment in AI-generated output, preventing pursuits of ineffective solutions and technical dead ends and ensuring course correction early.

Demonstrated experience in MSSQL and Entity Framework.

Proficiency in collaborating with UX designers to translate designs into working software.

Proficiency in creating and consuming RESTful APIs.

Proficiency in Unit Testing, including writing comprehensive, maintainable, and efficient test cases to ensure code correctness, reliability, and performance.

Experience working with cloud native applications.

Proactively addresses challenges, seeking opportunities for continuous improvement.

Self-motivated with the ability to contribute effectively with minimal supervision.

Ability to adapt to dynamic project needs while maintaining quality and focus.

Ability to participate in team on-call rotation during evenings, weekends, or holidays for emergency support or special events.

Experience with the following is appreciated but not strictly required: Authentication (e.g., OIDC, OAuth, SAML), NextJS, ExpressJS, and Building pipelines and DevOps practices.

Salary Range

The base salary for this position is $150,000 - $200,000 annually. Consistent with applicable laws, compensation will be determined based on the candidate's level, relevant skills, qualifications, and experience along with requirements for the position and annual financial plans.

Skillable is a distributed first team with employees working across the U.S., and we do not consider geography when determining compensation ranges.

Pay range and current benefit offerings are effective for 90 days from posting date. Standard employment offerings are subject to potential change upon periodic review and analysis, at the discretion of Skillable.

What We Offer

We believe in providing a suite of benefits that ensure our employees know we appreciate them as people first. Skillable wants to be a company that promotes physical, emotional and all around well-being through our benefit offerings! Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Fully remote with a monthly stipend to pay for office services and supplies
• Medical (2 plan options), dental (2 plan options), vision, health savings account with generous employer contributions, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, EAP, group paid life insurance, group paid STD and LTD and voluntary life/AD&D insurance, accident and critical illness options.
• 401(k) with company match, tuition reimbursement, healthy lifestyle reimbursements.
• Unlimited PTO, Paid holidays, bereavement leave, parental leave, caregiver leave and paid FMLA leave.
• Privilege of logging off at 2:00 pm local time, every Friday for team members who are caught up on work and meeting deliverables. Full company closure during the 4th of July holiday week.
• Reimbursement for up to $750 annually to use towards lifestyle choices that impact their wellness such as gym memberships, fitness classes or healthy meal plans.
• Stipend of $200 a month for office expenses.
• Access to pet insurance; access for employees and dependents to Skillable learning opportunities through our product and more!

Working Conditions:

The job conditions for this position are in a remote home office setting, requiring a space that supports privacy and focus to attend to regular and frequent video and voice calls. Employees in this position use PC and phone on an on-going basis throughout the day. Periodic travel may be required equaling up to approximately 10% of the time.

Skillable participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment.

Fraud Prevention:

To protect candidates from recruiting scams, please note that our Talent Acquisition Manager will only contact applicants using the personal contact information provided when applying through our official careers page. If you did not apply but are being pursued about a position, our initial outreach will only occur through LinkedIn - not via Indeed. If you receive an unexpected message directing you to apply through another website or from anyone other than our Talent Acquisition Manager, please treat it with caution.

Skillable can only hire potential candidates with a primary residence in the following States: AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, ID, IN, KY, MA, ME, MI, MO, NC, ND, NE, NH, NV, NY, OH, OK, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA, WI.