Principal Staff Software Engineer, Systems Infrastructure

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We're also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that's built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed. Join us to transform the way the world works. At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. This role may be remote or hybrid. At LinkedIn, hybrid roles are performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team. Remote roles are performed from the designated home work location upon time of hire, and any changes to this home work location requires a review of remote status and approval. We are seeking a Principal Staff Software Engineer to join our organization. The team builds and evolves the foundational platforms that keep LinkedIn’s services reliable, scalable, secure, and high-performing at global scale. As a Principal Staff Engineer, you will serve as a senior technical leader and architect responsible for defining and driving next-generation infrastructure that powers AI-first unified developer platforms — enabling engineers and AI agents to collaboratively build, deploy, and operate software with confidence. Responsibilities: Architect large-scale infrastructure systems for end-to-end software lifecycle platforms Design unified CI/CD and deployment platforms spanning build, test, deploy, and runtime operations Build observability, monitoring, and cost visibility systems for production infrastructure Develop real-time data pipelines and online serving systems supporting automated or AI-assisted operations Design service infrastructure where automated systems or AI agents interact with deployments, traffic, and runtime environments Lead Kubernetes-based compute orchestration for large-scale workload management Build declarative, version-controlled infrastructure and platform management systems Define security-by-design standards across the software development lifecycle Set infrastructure architecture and technical direction across teams and cloud environments Lead architecture, design reviews, and implementation of foundational infrastructure systems Review system designs, resolve architectural trade-offs, and mentor engineers on scalable system design Basic Qualifications: BS/BA in Computer Science or related technical field or equivalent technical experience 10+ years of experience in software design, development, and algorithm related solutions 5+ years of experience as an architect or in a technical leadership position Experience designing and building distributed systems, service infrastructure, or related systems Preferred Qualifications: MS or PhD in Computer Science or related field 12+ years of experience in software design with at least 5 years in a technical leadership position Experience architecting and operating large-scale distributed systems, including service delivery, load balancing, traffic management, service mesh, and Kubernetes-based compute infrastructure Experience with large-scale data and storage systems, including online databases, distributed caching, and high-availability architectures Architectural expertise in developer platform infrastructure, including CI/CD pipelines, deployment systems, and end-to-end software lifecycle platforms Experience designing declarative, version-controlled infrastructure and cloud-native systems using technologies such as Kubernetes, Envoy, gRPC, or Apache Kafka Experience building production observability, monitoring, cost visibility, real-time data, and online serving infrastructure for large-scale platforms Track record of leading large-scale infrastructure initiatives across multiple engineering organizations, including Kubernetes orchestration and automated or AI-assisted operations Demonstrated ability to define infrastructure strategy, drive cross-organization technical initiatives, and align architectural decisions with business outcomes Suggested Skills Distributed Systems Design Online Databases Caching Infrastructure High-availability Systems Load Balancing Service Mesh / Envoy Kubernetes Technical Leadership LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range for this role is $226,000 to $369,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit  https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits . Equal Opportunity Statement We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. 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