Principal Engineer

Job Description

Principal Software Engineer (P6)

Join us at Zendesk where were on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. Were accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI automation and intelligent customer experiences because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

Were establishing a world-class Research & Development centre in Pune and are hiring a Principal Software Engineer to lead technical direction for high-impact platform and product this role youll design and deliver large-scale systems influence cross-team architecture and mentor senior engineers so Zendesk can scale reliably while embedding AI-enabled innovation into our customer experience.

Summary

As a Principal Software Engineer you will own large cross-cutting technical areas and drive architectural decisions that affect multiple teams and products. Youll partner closely with Product Design SRE and Engineering leaders to define roadmaps reduce delivery risk and deliver scalable secure and highly available systems. You will also mentor senior engineers and help grow technical leadership across the organization.

What youll be doing

• Own and drive architecture for complex systems or platform capabilities that serve multiple product teams; define APIs interfaces and abstractions that enable scale and reuse.
  

• Lead end-to-end delivery of large features and platform initiatives: design implementation testing rollout and operational readiness.
  

• Set technical direction and standards: guide design reviews influence roadmap trade-offs and promote engineering excellence across teams.
  

• Champion an AI-First mindset: guide teams to thoughtfully integrate AI into product features and internal workflows to deliver purposeful high-value automation and innovation.
  

• Improve reliability and resilience: define SLOs/SLIs lead incident retrospectives reduce operational toil and advance disaster recovery readiness.
  

• Mentor senior engineers staff-level contributors and architects; develop technical talents and raise overall engineering craft.
  

• Collaborate with globally distributed cross-functional partners (Product Design Security SRE Program Management) to balance business value risk mitigation and technical debt.
  

• Advocate for and implement scalable observability testing CI/CD and secure engineering practices.

What you bring to the role

• Technical authority and depth: you have a proven history of designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems with measurable impact.
  

• AI-first perspective: you can identify high-leverage opportunities for responsible AI adoption guiding teams to integrate ML/AI where it delivers clear product or operational value.
  

• Systems and architectural thinking: strong skills in system design data consistency models performance and capacity planning and trade-off analysis.
  

• Cross-team influence: experience aligning multiple teams and stakeholders on technical strategy standards and roadmaps without direct reporting authority.
  

• Coaching and mentorship orientation: you actively develop other senior engineers and technical leaders through feedback code/design reviews and role modeling.
  

• Product empathy and pragmatism: you balance speed maintainability and user outcomes making pragmatic decisions that serve customers and the business.
  

• Operational excellence mindset: you prioritize observability reliability incident readiness and measurable SLAs/SLOs.
  

• Clear communicator and collaborator: you present technical trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences and you build trust across Product Security and Business teams.

Required qualifications

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
  

• 10 years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated ownership of large production systems.
  

• 4 years in senior technical leadership roles (senior engineer staff principal) with cross-team impact.
  

• Strong software design and system architecture skills: distributed systems data consistency performance and capacity planning.
  

• Proven proficiency in one or more production languages (examples: Go Java Python Ruby TypeScript) and experience with cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/Azure).
  

• Experience with production monitoring incident response and operational excellence practices.
  

Preferred qualifications

• Experience designing or shipping AI/ML-driven features or platforms in production and integrating ML workflows into service architectures.
  

• Deep knowledge of microservices containers and orchestration (Docker Kubernetes) service meshes and infrastructure-as-code.
  

• Familiarity with modern observability stacks (Prometheus Grafana OpenTelemetry Jaeger) and robust CI/CD pipelines.
  

• Track record of influencing technical strategy across multiple teams contributing to technical standards and driving cross-team initiatives.
  

• Open-source contributions published technical writing or conference speaking are a plus.
  

Location

Pune India hybrid working model aligned with Zendesks local workplace policies.

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection collaboration learning and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working enables us to purposefully come together in person at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world to connect collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer and were proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity equity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race color religion national origin age sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation marital status medical condition ancestry disability military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application complete any pre-employment testing or otherwise participate in the employee selection process please send an e-mail to with your specific accommodation request.