Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices

About the role

The Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices is a senior technical leader responsible for strengthening engineering excellence across Crunchyroll through technical strategy, architectural guidance, engineering best practices, and technical mentorship.

Reporting to the VP, Engineering Operations and Strategy, this role partners closely with Engineering Leadership, and Principal and Staff Engineers across all engineering domains to help shape the company's long-term technical strategy, while enabling engineering teams to make high-quality architectural decisions independently. Rather than acting as a centralized architecture authority, this role succeeds by influencing through technical credibility, developing engineering capability, and fostering a culture of technical ownership.

The Principal Engineer serves as a force multiplier through building frameworks, coaching technical leaders, and creating reusable patterns that allow teams to solve increasingly complex problems themselves. Success is measured not by the number of architectural decisions made personally, but by the growth of engineering capability, technical leadership, and organizational excellence across the Engineering organization.

We are considering applicants for the location of San Francisco, California.

Core Areas of Responsibility

Drive Technical Strategy

Partner with the SVP of Engineering and Engineering Leadership to translate business priorities into a long-term technical strategy

Identify strategic technology investments that improve scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity

Help align technical initiatives across engineering domains while respecting domain ownership

Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and engineering practices that improve engineering effectiveness

Influence Architecture Through Guidance

Develop reusable architectural patterns, reference implementations, and engineering guidance that teams can adopt

Help teams evaluate architectural tradeoffs and make informed technical decisions.

Encourage consistency in service architecture through collaboration, education, and proven practices

Facilitate technical design discussions for high-impact initiatives when appropriate

Build Engineering Capability

Coach and mentor Principal, Staff, Senior, and emerging technical leaders across the Engineering organization

Foster architectural thinking and strong technical decision-making within engineering teams

Support career growth for senior technical contributors through mentorship and technical coaching

Lead architecture workshops, technical learning sessions, and engineering forums

Help cultivate the next generation of technical leaders across the organization

Drive Organizational Learning

Capture institutional knowledge and transform it into reusable engineering guidance

Develop technical documentation, architecture patterns, playbooks, and reference materials that reduce dependency on individual experts

Identify recurring engineering challenges and partner with teams create scalable solutions that benefit multiple domains

Improve onboarding and knowledge transfer for engineers through documentation and education

Promote a culture of continuous learning and technical curiosity throughout Engineering

What Success Looks Like

Engineering teams confidently make high-quality architectural decisions with minimal centralized guidance

Technical leadership capability continues to grow throughout the Engineering organization

Engineering best practices are widely adopted through influence, education, and demonstrated value rather than mandate

Architectural knowledge is broadly distributed, reducing reliance on individual subject matter experts

Proven architecture patterns and engineering guidance are consistently reused across teams

Strong collaboration exists across Engineering domains

Operational excellence, including reliability, observability, security, maintainability, and developer experience is embedded within engineering teams

Engineering teams increasingly solve complex technical challenges independently, demonstrating stronger technical ownership and organizational capability

About You

We get excited about candidates, like you, because...

You have 15+ years of experience in Software Engineering

You possess strong Leadership skills.  You raise the bar, lead by example, and mentor others

You are highly-collaborative. You influence through credibility over authority, working with all levels across the organization

You have technical expertise across the full stack, and are able to provide insights and guidance to front-end, back-end or infrastructure teams, when needed

You have experience designing, implementing and operating services at large scale

You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior engineering, product, and business leaders

You are a hands-on engineer that codes, knows how to validate designs, investigate difficult technical problems, and contribute directly to critical initiatives

You are able to distinguish and balance between long-term architectural direction and pragmatic delivery, knowing when to standardize, when to extend existing systems, and when a new approach is needed

You are skilled at defining architecture principles, patterns, and best practices that improve consistency, quality, and engineering velocity across multiple teams

You can translate business strategy and product requirements into clear technical direction, identifying the capabilities, investments, and sequencing needed for long-term success

You excel at strong architectural judgment and are able to evaluate tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, security, performance, cost, complexity, and time to market

About the Team

The Engineering Practices team is newly formed as part of Engineering Strategy and Operations.  The team is a multiplier with the broader Engineering organization.  We create operational effectiveness, define and nurture organizational culture, and inform and communicate cross-functionally.  We strive to ensure the broader Engineering team is operating at the highest level of excellence.

Why you will love working at Crunchyroll

In addition to getting to work with fun, passionate and inspired colleagues, you will also enjoy the following benefits and perks:

Receive a great compensation package including salary plus performance bonus earning potential, paid annually.

Flexible time off policies allowing you to take the time you need to be your whole self.

Generous medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD, and life insurance

Health Saving Account HSA program

Health care and dependent care FSA

401(k) plan, with employer match

Employer paid commuter benefit

Support program for new parents

Pet insurance and some of our offices are pet friendly!

#LifeAtCrunchyroll #LI-Hybrid

The Pay Range for this position is listed. Actual pay will vary based on factors including, but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Crunchyroll’s Total Rewards offerings for employees. Other rewards may include performance bonuses, employer matched retirement savings, time-off programs, and progressive health benefits and perks.

Pay Transparency - San Francisco, CA

$260,400—$325,500 USD