Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to shape the future of Dropbox through bold new ideas and technical leadership. You'll help define the vision, architecture, and execution for our most forward-looking products - building the foundation for what comes next at Dropbox.

This role sits at the heart of innovation, blending hands-on engineering with strategic thinking. You'll explore new product spaces, prototype ideas that don't yet have a home, and guide how we integrate new technologies - whether we build them or bring them in. Along the way, you'll help foster a strong, collaborative engineering culture and partner closely with product, design, and strategy to turn high-potential ideas into real impact.
Responsibilities

• Build and foster a strong engineering culture focused on excellence, velocity, and innovation
• Define the architecture and integration strategy for new initiatives, including both internally developed and acquired products
• Conduct technical due diligence on potential M&A targets to assess scalability, quality, and strategic fit
• Rapidly prototype new product ideas and validate emerging opportunities that fall outside existing teams
• Partner cross-functionally with product, design, and strategy teams to translate vision into technical execution
• Maintain a high technical bar and guide the team through complex architectural decisions
• Contribute to shaping Dropbox's long-term innovation roadmap through technical insight and experimentation

Requirements

• 10+ years of full-stack engineering experience, including 3+ years in a technical leadership role
• Proven success operating at both startup and enterprise scale-building early MVPs and scaling to millions of users
• Deep understanding of product architecture evolution and trade-offs between speed and scalability
• Experience with technical diligence and evaluating software systems for integration or acquisition
• Some experience in engineering management preferred
• Strong bias toward experimentation and comfort navigating high-ambiguity problem spaces

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading 0 1 product development or founding early-stage startup teams
• Demonstrated success incubating and scaling new technologies or products within a larger organization
• Strong background in distributed systems design, data-intensive applications, or cloud infrastructure
• Familiarity with modern AI/ML technologies, developer platforms, or productivity tools

Compensation

US Zone 1

This role is not available in Zone 1

US Zone 2

$256,300-$346,700 USD

US Zone 3

$227,800-$308,200 USD