Principal Engineer / Technical Platform Lead

The Role This is a hands-on technical leadership role, not a people management position (at least initially). You will operate as a force multiplier for engineering, working across both legacy and greenfield systems to shape the foundation of Cav’s future platform. You will: - Drive architectural clarity across a stable but complex federal product and a fast-moving AI-native product - Identify and extract reusable platform components (e.g., evidence ingestion, control mapping, AI primitives) - Prevent architectural drift and reduce long-term technical debt while enabling rapid iteration - Partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Security teams to align on scalable system design - Write production-grade code and lead by example in system design and implementation - Mentor senior engineers and elevate technical decision-making across the organization - Establish best practices for leveraging AI tools and automation to improve engineering velocity - This role is expected to evolve into a broader leadership position (e.g., Head of Engineering), but the immediate priority is execution and architectural ownership. Key Responsibilities - Define and drive the long-term technical architecture across multiple products - Build and extract shared services and platform capabilities across systems - Ensure scalability, performance, and security in a highly regulated (federal) environment - Partner with cybersecurity and compliance teams to align with frameworks such as FedRAMP and NIST - Reduce system complexity and improve maintainability of the legacy platform - Guide the AI product toward transparent, scalable, and production-ready architecture - Make high-impact technical decisions in ambiguous, fast-changing environments Improve developer productivity through tooling, automation, and AI-assisted workflows - Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership on technical strategy and trade-offs Qualifications - 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant time in startup or high-growth environments - Proven track record of designing and scaling complex distributed systems - Strong backend engineering expertise (APIs, data pipelines, microservices, or platform architecture) - Experience working across both legacy systems and greenfield development - Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP) - Experience working in or alongside cybersecurity, compliance, or regulated environments - Demonstrated ability to make and own high-stakes architectural decisions - Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence senior technical and business stakeholders - Willingness to be hands-on and deeply involved in implementation Desired Experience - Background in cybersecurity platforms or compliance-driven products (e.g., FedRAMP, NIST, SOC 2) - Experience integrating or building AI/ML-driven features or platforms - Familiarity with data modeling for complex regulatory or security frameworks - Experience building internal platforms or shared services across multiple products - Prior experience navigating product convergence or platform unification - Exposure to Zero Trust architectures and modern security design principles - Experience mentoring senior engineers or acting as a technical lead across teams