Principal Engineer (Engineering Practices)

• 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
• 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
• 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

Benefits

• 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
• Employer paid commuter benefit
• 401(k) plan, with employer match
• Support program for new parents
• Health care and dependent care FSA
• Pet insurance and some of our offices are pet friendly!- You are skilled at defining architecture principles, patterns, and best practices that improve consistency, quality, and engineering velocity across multiple teams
• You have 15+ years of experience in Software Engineering
• You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior engineering, product, and business leaders
• You have experience designing, implementing and operating services at large scale
• You can translate business strategy and product requirements into clear technical direction, identifying the capabilities, investments, and sequencing needed for long-term success
• 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 excel at strong architectural judgment and are able to evaluate tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, security, performance, cost, complexity, and time to market
• You are a hands-on engineer that codes, knows how to validate designs, investigate difficult technical problems, and contribute directly to critical initiatives
• 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