Principal Software Engineer, Capacity Infrastructure

Company Description

Linked In is the worlds largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We're also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that's built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun where everyone can succeed.

At Linked In, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a Linked In office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

The Capacity Efficiency engineering organization is responsible for matching the supply of hardware and software resources at Linked In to current and anticipated demand for those resources. We deliver impact by ensuring that we have the capacity to meet the needs of traffic from our billion+ members. We do this while also optimizing the cost of these resources.

We are seeking a Principal Staff Software Engineer to join Linked In's Capacity Infrastructure team to play a critical role in designing and implementing the foundational datasets and tools that power the visibility, cost attribution and planning of Linked In Infrastructure.

As a Principal Engineer, they will mentor team members, uphold a high bar for technical excellence, and elevate the team's overall capabilities. They will also embody and promote Linked In's Core Values—transformation, collaboration, and results—nurturing a culture that reflects these principles.

In this role, you'll collaborate closely with cross-functional partners, finance, bizops, product and capacity planning and customer stakeholders to strategize, design, and lead forward‑thinking solutions. A hands‑on approach to complex problem‑solving, coupled with strong leadership and a commitment to delivering high‑quality outcomes, is critical to your success.

• We take an engineering‑first approach to elevate infrastructure. As a Principal Engineer, you'll be driving the strategy to reduce the total cost of ownership to run and operate our infrastructure.
• Build platforms to augment end‑to‑end reliability and scalability of Linked In's platforms, services, and products and bring actionable operational insights to enable continuous improvement.
• Scale: our data footprint continues to grow exponentially beyond 100s of thousands of servers, multiple exabytes of storage, 10s of trillions of events/messages—arrive at a cohesive strategy and best practices to continue to scale our footprint 10x.
• Cloud‑based ecosystems are rapidly evolving. In this role, you will be expected to stay up to date with the latest cloud trends, including Kubernetes, serverless technologies, containers, and best practices for managing and optimizing large‑scale infrastructure performance and help define our strategy and roadmap to set us up to be competitive and get ahead of the trends.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to elevate the engineering organization, actively enhancing craftsmanship at Linked In by establishing best practices and strategic approaches.
• Influence and lead architecture and design decisions with a strong focus on ensuring effective capacity management and on efficiencies.
• Drive consensus across cross‑functional teams within a matrixed organization, fostering alignment and building a cohesive and collaborative team culture.

• BA/BS Degree or higher in Computer Science or related technical discipline, or related practical experience.
• 10+ years of experience in software design/development.
• 7+ years in a technical leadership role overseeing large, cross‑functional teams.
• 7+ years' experience in/with programming skills in languages such as Python, Go, Java, Rust, Scala, or C++.
• Hands‑on experience developing distributed systems or other large‑scale systems.

• M…