Role Overview
The Principal Engineer is a senior individual contributor role within the PetDesk CarePath organization, reporting directly to the Chief of Staff / CarePath Partnership Lead. This position provides technical leadership for the CarePath Loyalty product initiative, partnering closely with Engineering, Product, Operations, and business stakeholders to shape the architecture, scalability, and long-term technical strategy of a rapidly growing platform.
What You Will Do
Lead complex technical initiatives, drive key architectural decisions, and bring demonstrated operational awareness and project management experience to enable teams to deliver reliable, scalable solutions.
Why It Might Be a Fit
The ideal candidate is equally comfortable operating at a systems architecture level and rolling up their sleeves to move a critical initiative forward, with a builder's mindset, a bias toward action, and the interpersonal skills to work effectively across internal teams and external stakeholders alike.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with at least 3 years operating at a Staff or Principal Engineer level or equivalent technical leadership capacity
- Deep expertise designing and operating distributed systems, integration platforms, APIs, and data-intensive applications at scale
- Demonstrated experience building and supporting complex third-party integrations, preferably within healthcare, veterinary technology, fintech, SaaS, or similarly interconnected ecosystems
- Strong understanding of system architecture, event-driven design, data modeling, and modern cloud-native application development
- Demonstrated project management experience — ability to plan, track, and drive complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and stakeholders without formal PM authority or certification required
- Proven operational awareness — experience identifying inefficiencies in technical workflows or business processes and working cross-functionally to implement meaningful improvements
- Experience serving as a technical point of contact for external customers, partners, or vendors — including the ability to communicate clearly and build trust with non-technical stakeholders such as clinic operators, corporate group contacts, or pharmaceutical manufacturer partners
- Proven ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and drive alignment without formal authority
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business impact for both technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience evaluating architectural tradeoffs and making pragmatic decisions that balance short-term business needs with long-term scalability
- Strong proficiency in modern programming languages and cloud platforms, with the ability to contribute hands-on when needed
- Self-directed and highly collaborative with a builder's mindset, strong business acumen, and a genuine passion for solving complex problems that impact real customers
Benefits
- Competitive salary ($164,000 - $180,000 a year)
- PetDesk combines the industry's most user-friendly client engagement tools with the highest-rated pet parent app to simplify your veterinary clinic’s operations while strengthening client relationships
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