Posted 29 days ago
Principal Software Engineer, Product Engineering
@ Dropbox
Remote in Canada
Overview
Dropbox is hiring a Principal Software Engineer for Product Engineering to own company-critical technical problems with multi-year impact, define long-term technical direction for customer-facing experiences used by millions, and lead responsible AI adoption across products and engineering workflows. The role is hands-on in code and design where leverage is highest, and it operates in a distributed, virtual environment.
Responsibilities:
- Own company-critical technical problems across multiple teams
- Define long-term technical strategy with senior leaders
- Architect foundational systems operating at hundreds of millions of users
- Remain hands-on in critical software development and code reviews
- Drive AI adoption in product features and engineering workflows
Requirements summary:
- Advanced degree in computer science or equivalent industry experience
- 15+ years designing large-scale software systems
- Principal-level track record influencing technical direction
- Experience building consumer products at scale
- Practical use of modern ML and LLM-based APIs in production
Tools & skills
Source and dates
Employer career site / ATS feed · greenhouse
- Employer posting date
- 2026-10-08
- First seen by our source
- 2026-10-10
- Source record updated
- 2026-11-03
These dates describe the source record, not a live verification that the employer is still hiring. Check the original posting.
Job details
| Seniority | Lead |
| Department | Software development |
| Experience | 15+ years |
| Work setting | Office, Home |
| Position | Mostly sitting |
| Physical demands | physical low · computer high |
| Education | Master’s degree (preferred) |
| Fields of study | Computer Science |
Summary and details written by AI from the posting; the employer’s posting is the authority.
Dropbox
Saved company profile
Historical company information from a saved The Jobs API profile (LinkedIn/Crunchbase fields). It is not live-verified; figures may have changed. Missing values remain unknown.
Dropbox is the one place to keep life organized and keep work moving.
Full company description
Dropbox is the one place to keep life organized and keep work moving. With more than 700 million registered users across 180 countries, we're on a mission to design a more enlightened way of working. To learn more about working at Dropbox, visit jobs.dropbox.com We also have a few simple guidelines to keep this space respectful and productive. Please avoid: - Harassing other people or using language that’s hateful, offensive, vulgar, or advocates violence - Trolling, fraud and spamming - Violating someone else’s rights or privacy - Advertising or soliciting donations - Link baiting - Posting off topic comments or thread hijacking We may remove comments that violate these guidelines.
- LinkedIn followers
- 526,561
- People associated on LinkedIn
- 4,220
- Reported office locations
- 1800 Owens St, San Francisco, California 94158, US
- 1 Hatch Street Upper, Dublin, County Dublin 2, IE
- Am Kaiserkai 69, Hamburg, HH 20457, DE
- 701 5th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104, US
- Business categories
- Consumer
- Higher Education
- File Sharing
- Productivity Tools
- Education
- Web Hosting
- Collaboration
- Enterprise Software
- Secondary Education
- Private Cloud
- Other recorded names
- Dropbox
- Specialties
- Cross-platform file sync
- File sharing
- Online backup
- Cloud storage
- Collaboration
- smart workspace
- team communication
- and productivity
- Profile identifies a recruitment agency
- No
- Reported total investment
- 2,809,215,000
Currency and observation date were not supplied; this is not a current valuation or a funding round.
Dropbox is the one place to keep life organized and keep work moving. With more than 700 million registered users across 180 countries, we're on a mission to design a more enlightened way of working. To learn more about working at Dropbox, visit jobs.dropbox.com We also have a few simple guidelines to keep this space respectful and productive. Please avoid: - Harassing other people or using language that’s hateful…
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software Development |
| Company size | 1,001-5,000 employees |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Organization type | Public Company |
| Year founded | 2007 |
| Specialties | Cross-platform file syncFile sharingOnline backupCloud storageCollaborationsmart workspaceteam communicationand productivity |
| Open jobs on Jobsy | 8 |
| View page |
Role Description
As a Principal Engineer at Dropbox, you will own company critical, loosely defined technical problems with multi year impact, operating at the intersection of technology, product, business strategy, and applied AI. You will define long term technical direction for customer facing experiences used by millions, identifying where AI meaningfully improves customer value and translating evolving business context and industry advances into durable, multi area strategies and roadmaps that shape how Dropbox builds, scales, and innovates, while remaining hands on in software development where it provides the greatest leverage.
Your influence will span organizations, setting foundational architecture, driving execution standards, and aligning senior technical and product leaders across boundaries. You will lead the responsible introduction and adoption of AI across product capabilities and engineering workflows, bring clarity to the most complex decisions, institutionalize engineering excellence, and contribute directly through critical design, prototyping, and code reviews.
In return, you will operate as a trusted technical partner to senior leadership, shape systems and platforms including AI powered foundations that define Dropbox’s future, and act as a company level technical strategist, advancing Dropbox’s mission to create a more enlightened way of working.
Responsibilities
- Own and drive technical outcomes across multiple teams and organizations, delivering company critical customer and business impact at scale.
- Define long term technical strategy and partner with senior Product and Engineering leaders as the technical owner for the most important company objectives.
- Tackle the most ambiguous and far reaching technical and product problems, shaping what the company builds as much as how it builds it.
- Remain deeply hands on in software development, owning and implementing the most critical, complex, and foundational parts of the system where leverage is highest.
- Influence and align roadmaps across organizations, resolving structural bottlenecks and changing how Dropbox builds and operates.
- Architect and evolve foundational systems (this may involve both frontend and backend systems) and platforms that enable new product capabilities and operate reliably at the scale of hundreds of millions of users.
- Model exceptional technical judgment and execution rigor, setting and sustaining high engineering standards across a distributed, virtual environment
- Drive AI adoption both to increase productivity and to produce AI based features.
Requirements
- Advanced degree in Computer Science or a related technical field involving substantial software development, or equivalent industry experience demonstrating deep technical mastery.
- 15+ years of experience designing, building, and evolving large scale software systems with sustained impact across multiple teams or organizations.
- Demonstrated success operating at a Principal level, owning company critical technical problems and influencing long term technical direction.
- Strong experience building consumer facing products at scale, with a deep understanding of user experience, performance, reliability, and operational excellence.
- Broad and deep technical expertise across multiple domains, including several of frontend, mobile, search, databases, storage systems, concurrency, and distributed systems.
- Practical experience applying modern ML, LLM based APIs, and agentic frameworks in production systems, with sound judgment around quality, cost, and risk.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and persuasively to senior engineering, product, and executive audiences.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience defining and scaling company wide platforms or architectural standards that are adopted across multiple organizations.
- Proven track record of leading the introduction of new technologies such as AI or ML into core products or engineering workflows with durable impact.
- Experience operating in highly distributed, virtual first engineering organizations at global scale.
Durable Skills
AI fluency means using these tools to amplify human judgment, not replace it. We believe people with these skills will thrive as work and technology continue to evolve:
- Awareness: Understand yourself and others.
- Judgment: Evaluate information and make decisions in complex situations.
- Adaptability: Learn, adjust, and stay effective through change.
- Connection: Communicate, collaborate, and build trust.
To learn more about why these skills matter and what the data shows about thriving through change, read this blog post from our Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser.
Compensation
Journal
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