Principal Platform Engineer $200,000 USD/year Pay is set based on global value, not the local market.
Most roles = hourly rate x 40 hrs x 50 weeks
Description
We are seeking Principal Platform Engineers to architect the foundational systems that enable other teams to build effectively. In this role, you will focus on platform-level products where your architectural patterns, API design choices, and technical documentation define how multiple development teams operate.
Platform products you may contribute to:
- TimeBack: An educational platform that supports Alpha School's 2-hour learning model (achieving 99th percentile test outcomes)
- Incept: A content generation platform that produces personalized educational materials for various learning applications
- Crossover: An AI-powered recruitment platform that handles tens of thousands of candidate applications each month
- This position emphasizes design work: 50% dedicated to authoring specifications, API contracts, and technical decisions; 30% devoted to implementing sophisticated platform capabilities; 20% spent reviewing contributions and providing architectural guidance. You hold technical authority for architectural choices. Once aligned with the team, your specifications become binding.
You will join a compact team of accomplished engineers with substantial ownership and minimal bureaucracy. You design the systems, implement them, and maintain accountability for their success.
What you will be doing
- Authoring technical specifications prior to development kickoff
- Architecting APIs with careful attention to backward compatibility and future extensibility
- Creating Important Technical Decision (ITD) documents that include comprehensive rationale
- Implementing sophisticated platform capabilities
- Conducting pull request reviews to ensure architectural alignment
What you will NOT be doing
- Extensive team leadership or personnel management responsibilities
- Development on straightforward application-level products
- Participating in prolonged or excessive meetings
- Purely theoretical architecture work disconnected from implementation
Candidate requirements
- A minimum of 5 years of professional software development experience
- At least 2 years of experience designing systems where your APIs were consumed by other teams or your architectural decisions created dependencies for others
- Demonstrated history of producing technical specifications or technical decision documents that were subsequently implemented by other engineers
- Practical experience integrating AI tools into your development workflow
Applying for a role? Here’s what to expect.
Crossover's skill assessment process combines innovative AI power with decades of human research, to take the guesswork, human bias, and pointless filters out of recruiting high-performing teams.
Chat-style
screening interview.
Cognitive 
aptitude test.
Prove real-world 
job skills.
Interview with the hiring manager.
Accept job offer.
Pass
proctored test.
Frequently asked questions
Reviews
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Recruitment sucks. So we’re fixing it.
The Olympics of work
It’s super hard to qualify—extreme quality standards ensure every single team member is at the top of their game.
Premium pay for premium talent
Over 50% of new hires double or triple their previous pay. Why? Because that’s what the best person in the world is worth.
Shortlist by skills, not bias
We don’t care where you went to school, what color your hair is, or whether we can pronounce your name. Just prove you’ve got the skills.
Join the world's largest community of 
AI-first remote workers.