Snap
Principal Software Engineer
$235K–$414K
Los Angeles, California +5 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Sep 25, 2026
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
New York - 229 W 43rd St
Bellevue - 110 110th Ave NE
Seattle - 2025 1st Avenue
San Francisco - 1160 Battery St
Palo Alto - 395 Page Mill Rd - Experience
- 10+ years of post-Bachelor’s software development experience; or a Master’s degree in a technical field plus 9+ years of post-grad software development experience; or a PhD in a related technical field plus 6+ years of post-grad software development experience. Also requires 2+ years of technical leadership or domain-expert experience.
- Education
- Bachelor’s in a technical field such as computer science, mathematics, or statistics, or equivalent years of experience. Alternatives: Master’s or PhD as specified under experience.
About the job
Designs and scales critical services, sets technical direction across Snap, and leads engineering work for strategic initiatives.
What you'll do
- Design, implement, and scale critical engineering components and services.
- Collaborate across teams to evaluate trade-offs and deliver product solutions; promote availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management.
- Set company-wide technical direction and use AI tools and high-velocity workflows to ship secure, production-ready services.
What they ask for
- Bachelor’s in a technical field or equivalent years of experience; alternatively, a Master’s or PhD as specified below.
- 2+ years of technical leadership experience or acting as a domain expert, including ownership and setting technical direction for engineering projects.
- Experience architecting, designing, and developing distributed systems.
- Excellent programming and software design skills, including debugging, performance analysis, and test design; proven experience operating highly available systems at scale.
Nice to have
- Advanced degree in a technical field.
- Experience with cross-platform development.
Pay
$276,000-$414,000 annually (base salary); $262,000-$393,000 annually (base salary); $235,000-$352,000 annually (base salary)
AI focus
Use AI tools to streamline development and ship scalable services; audit generated output for architectural integrity, performance bottlenecks, security risks, and code correctness.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative