Senior Principal Software Development Engineer

Zillow

full-time

Posted on: 9/4/2025

Origin: • 🇺🇸 United States • California, Colorado

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💰 $220,200 - $351,800 per year

Senior

CloudDistributed SystemsKafkaSpark

About the role

Drive architectural coherence across teams and set long-term technical vision
Engage in code reviews, prototypes, and system-wide strategy while balancing architecture with execution
Build domain expertise in real estate professional workflows to connect technical decisions to customer needs
Introduce patterns and systems thinking to scale B2B/SaaS platforms
Anticipate technology and business trends and translate foresight into product and platform improvements
Guide teams on simplifying, investing, or creating leverage through code and communication
Partner closely with Product, Design, Data, and Marketing to strengthen business outcomes
Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders, shaping culture and operating rhythm

10+ years of experience building and shipping production-grade software or services
Skilled in distributed systems, SaaS platforms, and B2B systems
Experienced in setting architecture strategy for organizations
Comfortable navigating ambiguity and breaking down complex problems
Strong cross-functional partnership skills with Product, Design, BizOps, and Marketing
Exceptional communication skills (code reviews, design docs, executive briefings)
Passionate about mentoring and growing technical leaders
Experience with enterprise monetization platforms is a plus (billing, payments, subscriptions, entitlements, usage metering)
Deep expertise in microservice design, event-driven and stream processing platforms (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Spark), and data-centric architectures