Lead Principal Systems Software Engineer

Description

Defines architecture for large-scale systems software, firmware integration, and fleet automation that impacts multiple teams or products. Anticipates platform risks and cross-domain failure modes; builds frameworks for validation, conformance, and rapid incident mitigation. Influences silicon/board/firmware roadmaps to optimize for reliability, performance, and cost at hyperscale. Champions engineering excellence: coding standards, threat modeling, resource management, concurrency, and fault isolation. Leads multi-quarter initiatives, from prototype to production hardening, with measurable improvements in availability and efficiency.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

Systems Software Development:

• Contribute to architectural direction for system software and management paradigms across server, storage, networking, and GPU subsystems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and efficiency.

• Drive the definition and evolution of hardware provisioning solutions for next-generation hardware platforms, leading cross-functional efforts spanning engineering, operations, and global data centers.

• Lead the integration of system firmware with emerging hardware, collaborating with silicon, board, and firmware teams to ensure seamless bring-up and sustained operability.

• Partner with internal and external engineering, security, and vendor teams to deliver continuous improvements in performance, security, and diagnosability of system platforms and provisioning workflows.

• Lead or oversee the analysis of high-impact hardware provisioning and systems software failures, developing systemic engineering and process improvements for large-scale cloud fleets.

• Mentor engineers across teams, championing best practices in systems integration, reliability, and operational excellence.

Software Development and Coding:

• Leads project initiatives to design software solutions and identify and analyze requirements. Writes and defines foundational code for new projects or prototypes.

• Adheres to and improves execution of all phases of the software development lifecycle; coaches engineers across teams or units to drive improvements.

• Acts as a subject matter expert within the organization to develop and guide new software features and enhancements following design specifications, ensuring accessibility, and develops documents to clarify software design and code.

• Leads process, architecture, and code reviews across projects and/or products/services to drive improvements.

• Utilizes modern/emerging technologies to conduct debugging and troubleshooting to identify and fix highly complex software issues.

• Leads strategic initiatives to optimize software testing (e.g., functional and non-functional), quality assurance processes, software error logging, monitoring, and observability for effective debugging.

• Encourages innovation, research, and relevant industry practices to optimize performance across products and domains.

• Resolves and may troubleshoot highly complex and systematic issues requiring innovation related to application programming interface (API) functionality and integration.

• Implements innovative API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.

Software Architecture - Software System Structural Design:

• Leads task and project initiatives for the design and development of software, systems, and services. Defines project or design scope; reviews, influences, and approves scope and design recommendations.

• Provides technical guidance, domain expertise, and coaching in software architecture decisions and best practices that drive key organizational decisions, including industry standards and competitive considerations, providing mentorship and coaching for small teams and peers and contributing to both individual and team development across line of business/function.

• Utilizes innovative methods to conduct highly complex periodic reviews and ensures adherence to architectural standards.

• Collaborates with stakeholders across lines of business and externally, to align and build software architecture with business and/or customer goals and priorities.

• Implements innovative performance optimization and scalability strategies in software design.

• Conducts regular technology research and evaluation for architectural enhancements and translates into decisions and plans that can have a major impact on the organization.

Issue/Defect Collaboration - Software Products Support:

• Collaborates with stakeholders internally and externally to lead efforts to understand customer issues, root causes, and mitigation to align and explain rationale behind solutions.

• Must provide expert technical guidance and support to customers regarding customer-reported issues to mitigate recurrence.

• Acts as an advisor to advocate for customers' interests and suggests product enhancements and solutions based on feedback.

• Networks across lines of business to ensure customer satisfaction through timely resolution of issues and effective communication.

• Guides implementation of strategic solutions for customer issue and/or defect handling and training processes.

• Investigates and troubleshoots the most complex and broadly reaching product maintenance issues to ensure customer agreement on short- and long-term solutions (e.g., future enhancements).

Practices and Standards Compliance - Security and Compliance:

• Collaborates with the security team and leadership teams to establish, follow, and improve upon development practices and coding standards, providing coaching to less experienced team members.

• Participates in peer review processes and provides technical leadership with initiatives to ensure quality and adherence to broad acceptance criteria during development.

• Demonstrates, contributes to, and shares deep expertise of industry best practices and their application to software development processes.

• Implements highly complex secure software development practices/solutions requiring modern/emerging innovation to prevent security vulnerabilities, leveraging automated solutions to augment the manual review process.

Development Operations - System Maintenance:

• Leads project initiatives for periodic maintenance and testing operations for systems that require upgrading or patching (e.g., for critical vulnerabilities).

• Acts as subject matter expert to drive improvements, ensures automation, testing, and debugging of systems to ensure service/product availability, health, support, and reliability.

Core Responsibilities

Planning & Execution:

• Manages and provides direction on timelines, deliverables, and budgets when applicable for critical high-impact projects or initiatives that impact the line of business, ensuring timely completion and adherence to requirements.

• Anticipates and plans for shifts in resources or timelines based on changing business priorities, ensuring optimal outcomes.

Collaboration & Partnership:

• Influences cross-functional leaders and external stakeholders to gain alignment on strategic objectives.

• Fosters partnerships with key business leaders, stakeholders, and/or customers, identifying opportunities for expanding partnerships and promoting long-term organizational success.

• Champions transparency and inclusivity by actively seeking, listening to, and incorporating diverse perspectives.

Problem Solving:

• Leads specialized, advanced problem-solving efforts, serving as an escalation point for complex issues.

• Guides others to leverage innovative data-driven techniques to address ambiguous or novel issues, identify root causes, and drives the implementation of solutions that prevent future issues.

Continuous Learning:

• Leverages deep industry knowledge and expertise to serve as a thought leader within the organization.

• Contributes to the advancement of the field or industry through thought leadership (e.g., conference presentations, white papers, research contributions).

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