Principal Software EngineerAutodesk helps people imagine, design and create a better world. Autodesk accelerates better design through an unparalleled depth of experience and a broad portfolio of software to give customers the power to solve their design, business, and environmental challenges. In addition to designers, architects, engineers, and media and entertainment professionals, Autodesk helps students, educators, and casual creators unlock their creative ideas through user-friendly applications.
Autodesk's Digital Experience Engineering team is building the next-generation Content Platform. This is a headless, source-agnostic content pipeline that ingests, normalizes, versions, and delivers content powering experiences used by millions of customers worldwide.We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to provide deep technical leadership on this platform and to translate complex content, delivery, and orchestration requirements into a coherent, scalable architecture. As a Principal Engineer on the Content Platform, you will be a recognized subject-matter expert on distributed orchestration, schema-driven data pipelines, and high-throughput content delivery on AWS.
You will own architecture decisions that span multiple repositories and you will partner with product, architecture, and partner engineering teams to shape the platform's roadmap. You will report to a Software Development Manager and this is a hybrid work mode.ResponsibilitiesSet the technical direction for the Content Platform's core subsystems and drive architectural alignment across the multi-repo workspaceTranslate ambiguous product and partner requirements into concrete platform capabilities, schema extensions, and workflow patterns, and document the tradeoffs for engineering and product leadershipDesign and review complex changes to the workflow framework (BaseWorkflow, APIWorkflow, annotation-driven fan-out, registries) and the single-table DynamoDB model, ensuring correctness under concurrency, versioning, and locale semanticsLead cross-team initiatives that span ingestion, workflow orchestration, delivery, and content modeling; identify and resolve systemic issues in reliability, performance, and developer productivityEstablish and evolve engineering standards for the platform and coach engineers across teams to adopt them Partner with senior leaders, architects, DevOps, Support, and product organizations to advise on platform strategy, capacity planning, and incident responseServe as the escalation point for the most complex technical problems.Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and architecture deep dives, raising the technical bar across the teamMinimum QualificationsBachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience8+ years of professional software development experience, including significant time at a senior or staff level designing and operating distributed backend systems in productionDeep proficiency in Python, including experience designing libraries and frameworks consumed by other engineering teamsHands-on experience designing and operating workflow orchestration systems (Temporal, Cadence, Airflow, Step Functions, or equivalent) at production scaleStrong expertise with AWS, including Lambda, DynamoDB (single-table design and GSIs), S3, and event-driven integrations Expertise in REST API design and implementation with frameworks such as FastAPI, including schema validation, versioning, and backwards compatibilityDemonstrated ability to design data models and schemas and to drive system behavior from declarative configurationTrack record of leading architecture and design across multiple teams or repositories, and of influencing technical direction through written design docs and stakeholder communicationPreferred QualificationsExperience building headless CMS, content delivery, or large-scale content ingestion platforms, including integration with third-party CMSs such as ContentfulFamiliarity with immutable versioning, locale-per-item modeling, and hot-path delivery optimization on DynamoDB or similar NoSQL storesExperience with plugin/connector frameworks and source-agnostic ingestion patterns (acquire ? extract ?
transform ? deliver)Background in developer experience and platform tooling: uv, internal package registries, monorepo or multi-repo developer workflowsExperience operating regulated or multi-region environments (e.g., FedRAMP sync, cross-region replication, compliance-driven data handling)Exposure to AI/ML-driven content workflows, including embeddings, search relevance, or content enrichment pipelinesAdvanced expert role, requiring deep subject-matter knowledge and sound business acumen to advise leadersFor jobs at this level, knowledge of the business starts to become as important as subject-matter knowledgeIncumbents translate specialized subject-matter requirements into business needs/requirementsRequire depth of specialized expertise to interpret internal/external business issues and recommend best practices to address themSolve complex problems that require in-depth evaluation of variable factors by taking a broad perspective to identify the best approach and innovative solutionsWork independently, with close guidance in only the most complex or unusual situationsAdapt communication style to persuade various stakeholders across the business and frequently interact with senior leaders to provide advice and SMEMay lead functional teams or programs within own function (or closely related functions)