Principal Engineer, Software Development

Location Details: Remote, Serbia.

At GoDaddy the future of work looks different for each team. Some teams work in the office full-time; others have a hybrid arrangement (they work remotely some days and in the office some days) and some work entirely remotely.

This is a remote position, so you’ll be working remotely from your home. You may occasionally visit a GoDaddy office to meet with your team for events or meetings.

This is a hands‑on, Principal-level Individual Contributor (IC) role designed for a technical architect and systems thinker. You will not be a people manager, but a hands‑on‑keyboard technical leader who sets the standard for engineering excellence and multiplies the impact of the entire team. Your primary responsibility will entail architecting the technical direction, diving deep into our codebase, untangling its intricacies, and crafting a new future by harnessing innovative AI and automation.

You will operate with significant autonomy, driving the technical strategy for our key products and elevating the technical capabilities of senior engineers through deep technical mentorship.

• Lead systematic technical discovery
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  Perform deep architectural analysis of the codebase to identify bottlenecks, design stabilization strategies, and architect a phased technical transformation roadmap.
• Pioneer AI‑enabled automation
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  Design, prototype, and ship production‑grade AI systems (e.g., intelligent triage, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance) that fundamentally improve product stability and customer experience. Own the technical vision from concept through deployment.
• Architect observability infrastructure
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  Design and implement a comprehensive instrumentation and observability strategy using tools like Grafana. Define the technical standards for visibility, establish SLOs/SLIs, and engineer solutions that drastically reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).
• Drive technical decision‑making
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  Decompose complex, ambiguous problems and set the technical direction. Document architectural decisions (ADRs), establish engineering standards, and lead by example through code reviews and pairing sessions that elevate the entire team's capabilities.
• Bridge technical strategy with business outcomes
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  Partner directly with Product Management and Architecture to influence and shape technical strategy. Translate sophisticated technical concepts into business value and advocate for technical investments that drive long‑term success.

• 7+ years of progressive software engineering experience with at least 3+ years as a recognised technical leader (Staff/Principal Engineer, Tech Lead, or Architect).
• Proven track record as a technical leader:
  You have driven significant technical initiatives from conception to delivery, made architectural decisions with lasting impact, and established technical standards adopted by your teams.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise refactoring, stabilizing, and instrumenting large, monolithic, legacy codebases. You've owned the technical strategy for modernization efforts.
• Demonstrated ability to architect and ship AI/ML solutions that solve real business problems. You move beyond theory to deliver production‑grade, measurable outcomes.
• Expert‑level knowledge of observability engineering using tools like Datadog, New Relic, or Grafana. You've defined observability strategies, created actionable dashboards, established SLOs, and used telemetry to drive engineering decisions at scale.
• Consistent record as a self‑directed technical leader who thrives in ambiguity. You identify critical technical problems, articulate compelling technical visions, drive consensus, and execute while raising the technical bar for those around you.

• Deep technical expertise within the Word Press ecosystem.
• Production experience architecting solutions on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Hands‑on proficiency with our technology stack: AWS (EC2, ECS, S3, SQS, IAM), Grafana, Terraform, Ansible.

We offer a range of total rewards that may include paid time off, retirement savings (e.g., 401k, pension schemes),…