Principal Software Engineer; Remote

Overview

When you join Turnitin, you'll be welcomed into a company that is a recognized innovator in the global education space. For more than 25 years, Turnitin has partnered with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Turnitin products are used by educational institutions and certification and licensing programs to uphold integrity and increase learning performance, and by students and professionals to do their best, original work.

Experience a remote-first culture that empowers you to work with purpose and accountability in a way that best suits you, supported by a comprehensive package that prioritizes your overall well-being. Our diverse community of colleagues are all unified by a shared desire to make a difference in education.

Turnitin is a global organization with team members in over 35 countries including the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, India, and the Philippines.

We are seeking a Principal Domain Architect / Engineer with a deep, hands-on engineering background to drive the technical design and evolution of complex, large-scale systems. This role is for an experienced technologist who has spent years building production software and now operates at the intersection of architecture, engineering execution, and technical leadership.

As a Principal Architect / Engineer, you will remain highly hands-on, contributing code, prototypes, and technical frameworks while also defining architectural direction across a specific domain or set of platforms. You will work closely with senior engineers, engineering managers, and product leaders to translate business needs into durable, scalable, and well-engineered solutions.

The ideal candidate brings 10+ years of professional engineering experience, strong system design instincts, and the credibility that comes from having designed, built, and operated real-world systems in production.

Essential Knowledge/

Experience:

• Demonstrated experience designing and evolving large-scale, distributed, or service-oriented systems.
• Proven ability to operate as a hands-on Principal-level engineer or architect, influencing direction while staying close to the code.
• Strong understanding of system design fundamentals: concurrency, data modeling, APIs, messaging, and integration patterns.
• Experience working across the full software lifecycle, from design through production support.
• Strong proficiency in one or more mainstream programming languages such as Java, C#, C++, .NET, or similar.
• Solid understanding of operating system concepts, networking fundamentals, and system internals.
• Experience designing APIs, services, and shared frameworks consumed by multiple teams.
• Familiarity with modern development practices: CI/CD, automated testing, version control, and code review.
• Ability to influence technical direction across teams without direct authority.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex designs clearly.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring senior and staff-level engineers.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong emphasis on building and operating production systems.
• Demonstrated experience designing and evolving large-scale, distributed, or service-oriented systems.
• Proven ability to operate as a hands-on Principal-level engineer or architect, influencing direction while staying close to the code.
• Strong understanding of system design fundamentals: concurrency, data modeling, APIs, messaging, and integration patterns.
• Experience working across the full software lifecycle, from design through production support.

Preferred

Skills:

• Experience with cloud-based and distributed architectures.
• Background in performance optimization, scalability tuning, or reliability engineering.
• Exposure to security, privacy, or compliance considerations as part of system design.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or leading large technical refactors.
• Contributions to internal platforms, shared services, or developer enablement efforts.

The expected annual base salary range for this…